Yangpu district police dismissed a microblog post Sunday night that alleged a group of non-local residents assaulted an elderly local woman during a fight over a taxi.

An investigation into the fight, which included an examination of the surveillance video footage, found that the actual event differed widely from the account in the microblog post, according to a post on Yangpu District Public Security Bureau's microblog.

The post was written by a microblogger called zhandounan, who said she witnessed the fight. The post reported that a group of non-local young people attacked the elderly woman and her son as they were about to get into a taxi. She deleted the post late Sunday.

Still, the post touched a nerve online. It had received about 640 comments as of Sunday evening, many of which focused on tensions between the city's Shanghainese and migrant communities.

Although there was a scuffle Saturday night between a group of young people and an elderly woman and her son, there were local people on both sides of the fight, police said late Sunday.

Yangpu police received a report about a fight at Siping and Guoding roads at 9 pm Saturday, according to an earlier post on the Yangpu District Public Security Bureau's microblog.

The elderly woman and her son, surnamed Li, 47, both from Shanghai, were on their way home from dinner when Li got into an argument with a stranger over a taxi, police said.

The argument escalated and Li pushed the stranger, surnamed Yuan, who was also from Shanghai. The fight that followed drew in another man, surnamed Dong, 38, and four others who were accompanying Yuan.

Li went to the police station Sunday afternoon to answer questions about the fight. He acknowledged that he was in a physical altercation with two other men, according to police. He said his mother got shoved, but she was not injured.

Yuan and Dong suffered minor injuries, police said.

The microblogger only saw part of the incident, said a Yangpu police press officer surnamed He.

He said that the microblogger's account of the incident bore little resemblance to what actually happened, causing many residents to doubt the information that police made public.

The Yangpu police's first microblog post about the incident, which offered fewer details, was also the target of criticism.

There were more than 260 comments under the post by Sunday evening. Many criticized the police for treating locals unfairly.