2007 photos of brutalized Assam adivasi woman shared as Congress barbarism  

A still from the 2007 mobile clip that shows Laxmi Orang being chased by men with sticks. 

Two images of a naked Adivasi woman being chased and harassed on the streets of Assam by a few men has made a comeback on social media, this time to show the Congress in a poor light.

A post on a Facebook page named “Hindu Akhilesh Gupta” allegedly claimed that the Congress party abused and harassed a woman for raising slogans in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government at a Congress rally. 

Furthermore, the poster requested people to share the Facebook post to expose the “real face” of the Congress. At the time of writing this, the post was shared over 15,000 times and over 850 people had reacted to it.

Last year, the same images were shared by a page that claims to be the fan page of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath. According to a Quint story, the page called “Yogi AdityaNath योगी”, which reportedly has 95,000 followers, claimed that Congress workers stripped the woman and beat her while chasing her around. Earlier, the same images have been used to destroy the image of different political parties.

What’s the truth behind the photos?

The photos are of an adivasi woman, named Laxmi Orang, from Assam, who was stripped and beaten by non-tribal people while protesting for adivasi rights in Guwahati. This happened in 2007 when Laxmi and her supporters were demanding the status of scheduled tribes for the adivasi people residing in Assam and enhancement of daily wages of tea-garden labourers. During the protest, Laxmi got separated from the crowd when a group of local youths stripped, chased, and beat her.

Some people recorded the incident on mobile, which became viral and created a national outrage then. Later, three people were arrested for this.

At that time, the Congress was in power in the state and Tarun Gogoi the chief minister. Therefore, the fakers found it easy to claim that the party was behind the attack on the woman.