In a recent incident in Uttar Pradesh' Rae Bareli, a person threw ink at Somnath Bharti, MLA from Aam Aadmi Party in front of the police officers after he got angry at Somnath Bharti's remarks on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. A video of AAP MLA threatening police officials that he will get them sacked has also gone viral on social media 

Following this, two pictures have surfaced on social media one of which shows Somnath Bharti with ink on his face while the other shows a man wearing a dirty-white trouser being thrashed by policemen. The pictures are being widely shared with the claim that this is how UP Police treated Bharti. 

A Twitter user shared the images saying 'UP police made Bharti's pant wet from front and yellow from behind.'

Several other Twitter users are sharing this set of images with a similar claim. 

A Facebook user named Sanjiv Chauhan shared the image with the caption in Hindi that can be roughly translated to, "UP Police brave soldiers feeding Prasad to Somnath Bharti."

The truth behind the claim 

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false. The man seen in the viral images is not AAP MLA Somnath Bharti and one of the images is morphed. 

With the help of reverse image search, we found both the image shared in a Tweet by a verified named Shalabh Mani Tripathi user in December 2019. 

The first image was also published in a report by Amar Ujala published on 22 December 2019. According to the report, the picture was taken at the time of the protest against the Citizen Amendment Law in Lucknow. The second picture of the viral post was also taken during this time.

First Image 

The image has been morphed by replacing the face of a man wearing skull cap with Somnath Bharti's face. 

However, it is true that ink was thrown on Somnath Bharti in Rae Bareli on 11 January. After the incident, the police also arrested Somnath Bharti for making controversial statements about the Yogi government and hospitals in Uttar Pradesh. Two cases were registered against Somnath Bharti, in one of which he has got bail, while in the second case he has not got relief.

In conclusion, two old-unrelated images from the anti-CAA protest in Lucknow is being shared with a false claim that it shows Aam Aadmi Party MLA Somnath Bharti being thrashed by UP Police. One of the images has been morphed by replacing the face of a man wearing a skull cap with Somnath Bharti's face.