A distressing video showing a woman's corpse stuffed into a suitcase is viral with a false communal claim that she was a Hindu woman murdered by her Muslim boyfriend.
BOOM found that the incident is from 2022 when one Gulsher alias Gulzeb murdered his girlfriend Ramsha in Piran Kaliyar, Roorkee, Uttarakhand. We were able to confirm that both the accused and the victim belonged to the Muslim community.
The video is being shared on X peddling a narrative that the incident was a case of 'love jihad' with the caption, "All Abduls are the same....another suitcase... another story." The term 'love jihad' has been used by Hindu right-wing groups to propagate the conspiracy theory that Muslims are forcibly or fraudulently converting Hindu women on the pretext of marriage.
The video is disturbing in nature, viewer discretion is advised.
Click here to see, click here to see the archive.
Fact Check
BOOM had fact checked the same video in 2022 when it was viral with a similar false communal claim.
We had then contacted Station Officer, Dharmendra Rathi, Kaliyar police station in Uttarakhand who confirmed that the incident had no communal angle, with both the accused and victim being from the same community.
A specific keyword search on Google led us to a March 26, 2022 report by Times of India which identified the accused as a Gulsher alias Gulzeb.
The incident was also reported by several other media outlets including Jagran and ETV Bharat. According to the ETV Bharat story, the man and woman had been in a relationship for several years and had checked into a hotel in Kaliyar, Roorkee under false names.
The report further identified the victim as Ramsha, a resident of Mangalore in Karnataka. ETV Bharat further quoted the Haridwar SP (Rural) Pramendra Doval saying that the accused had killed the woman and was taking her dead body in a suitcase to dispose it. The report also quoted police sources who said that the accused killed the victim in a fit of rage after she refused to marry him.
BOOM had then also contacted Dharmendra Rathi, Kaliyar police station officer, who denied any communal angle to the incident, adding that the two were distant relatives and belonged to the same religion.