Chief of India's Hindu Monk State Adityanath 'Caught on Camera Swearing in Hindi'

The state chief of Uttar Pradesh (UP), Yogi Adityanath, on Monday provided a video snippet to the Indian media in which he spoke about the ongoing efforts to encourage more people to get vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.

While the official video clip of the Hindu monk tweeted by Indian news agency ANI is full of heartening motivation for people to get inoculated, a snippet of Adityanath using an obscene Hindi word – probably unsure of whether the camera was on or off – has gone viral on social media.

In the video, whose authenticity is yet to be verified, Adityanath can be heard saying the word "Ch**iya" that in Hindi means "idiot" or "f***er", ostensibly to somebody behind the camera.

Captioning the eight-second video, which has been viewed over 7,000 times on Twitter since it was posted an hour ago, journalist Anurag Dwary wrote, "It is shameful".

​Netizens coming across the video have reacted to it with astonishment, saying it was not right for the serving chief minister of a state to use foul language.

Meanwhile, ANI has posted the official video of Adityanath's cli[ with an editor's note at the end saying: "The earlier issued 'Live Sound' byte [sic] is retracted" – paving the way for more confusion around whether the UP state chief actually used the obscenity.

​So far, Adityanath's office has not released an official statement addressing the subject and hence it remains unclear if the video is real or doctored.