Authors
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
Claim
Pain of the suffering Hindus of Mewat who saved their lives by hiding in the temple during communal Violence in Nuh
An archive version of the same tweet can be seen here.
Fact
To check if the video was indeed showing one of the Hindu victims of communal Violence in Nuh, Newschecker split the video into keyframes and conducted reverse images searches on the keyframes, which led us to several social media posts from 2020 carrying the video.
Many social media posts on Twitter quote tweeted a tweet by one @johnaustin47, a social media handle that tweets on the plight of minorities in Pakistan, in November 2020. However, the tweet was later deleted by the author.
We found the same video was shared by many other handles around the same time. These users claimed that the incident was from Pakistan, where a “Hindu Man, Hari is cursing himself for being born as a Non-Muslim in Islamic state of Pakistan. Armed men beat him, abducted his 22-year-old doughter . No one helped. She returned after days of constant, severe gang rape. She hardly can move.”
We researched further and found a reddit post carrying the same video and description.
We also found a YouTube video by one Harris Sultan from December 2020, carrying a similar description. The video also carried subtitles. On close analyses of the subtitles, we just hear the man wailing and expressing his helplessness and worry, but it is pertinent to note that the subtitles did not indicate that the man was wailing about being born a Hindu.
In the YouTube description, Sultan also identifies himself as an ex-Muslims and an atheist.
Despite probing further, Newschecker could not ascertain if the details mentioned in the 2020 posts were indeed correct, and when the video was originally from. However, we can ascertain that the video is unrelated to the recent violence in Hayana’s Nuh and is being shared out of context.
Result: False
Sources
Tweet by @johnaustin47, dated November 28, 2020
Reddit post by @ranjan_zehereela2014, dated November 30, 2020
Tweet by @WiseWolf_Rsingh, dated August 27, 2022
YouTube video by Harris Sultan, dated December 10, 2020
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Authors
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
