An old photo of a discarded sex doll on a beach in Thailand is being shared by Indian social media users with a false claim that the image shows the dead body of a woman who was gang raped and murdered in the Maldives.
BOOM found that the claims are false and the photo shows an adult doll found near a beach in Thailand in August 2022.
After three Maldivian ministers left derogatory comments under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's post showing him at a beach in Lakshadweep, a diplomatic row ensued between India and Maldives. Several celebrities including Akshay Kumar responded to the controversy by sharing posts on X with hashtags like #ExploreIndianIslands. Maldives has since suspended the three ministers and a press release by the government clarified that the views of the ministers did not represent the views of the government as a whole.
The incident has led to a lot of misinformation targeting Maldives shared by Indian right-wing social media users.
The photo purporting to show a naked woman lying dead on a beach in Maldives has since been circulating on X with the caption, "A girl who went on a trip to the Maldives was found dead naked near the seashore. She was gang-raped and tortured before being killed!"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the photo is from August 2022 and shows an adult doll found in Thailand, and is unrelated to the ongoing India-Maldives row.
We ran a reverse image search of the viral photo on Google and found several reports that carried the same image, including this New York Post report published on August 22, 2022. According to the report, the police responded to calls about a woman's corpse being found at the Bang Saen beach in the Chon Buri province of Thailand. After arriving on the scene, the police found that the corpse was actually a "hyperrealistic sex doll".
We then looked for local news reports on the incident and found this report by Thaiger published on August 19, 2022. According to this report, the doll was found on the beach on August 18. The police discovered that the doll was an "AV sex doll" and after they removed the sheet that was draped over it, they found that the doll did not have a head. The report also mentioned that the doll costs around 20,000 baht (about Rs 47,000).
The report also carried a post by a page on Facebook dedicated to the Bang Saen beach shared on August 19. The post carried other photos of the doll as well. See here.