A collage of two images - one showing a body lying in a ditch, and another showing a young girl - are being shared on social media with captions linking the images to a recent incident of gangrape of a minor in Ramgarh, Jharkhand.
BOOM found these claims to be misleading; the images being shared are from an incident of gangrape and murder of a class 10 student in Kotkhai, Shimla district of Himachal Pradesh, that happened in 2017, and is unrelated to the recent incident of gangrape in Jharkhand.
According to news reports, six youths have been found guilty by the police of gangraping a minor girl from a tribal community in Ramgarh, Jharkhand. BOOM reached out to the investigating officer at Rajrappa Police in Ramgarh district of Jharkhand, who confirmed to us that five of the accused are from the Muslim community, while one is from the Hindu community. We were also confirmed by the police that the six accused were friends with the victim on Facebook.
The images have been shared on Twitter with the following caption:
Original text in Hindi: "आशिक अंसारी ने फेसबुक पर अपना नाम रखा सोनू। फिर फेसबुक पर ही नाबालिग हिन्दू लड़की से की दोस्ती। उसके बाद आशिक ने 6 लोगों के साथ मिलकर किया हिन्दू लड़की के साथ किया दुष्कर्म। घटना झारखंड की, मामला दर्ज, पुलिस ने भेजा जेल। जेल के बजाय बीच बाजार में गोली मारनी चाहिए सालो को".
English translation: "Ashiq Ansari changed his name on Facebook to Sonu. He became friends with a minor Hindu girl on Facebook. After that, Ashiq raped the Hindu girl along with 6 people. Incident happened in Jharkhand. Case has been filed and police sent them in custody. Instead of jailing them, they should be shot in market."
We have excluded any links to the posts due to the graphic nature of one of the viral images.
The photos were shared with the exact same claim on Facebook as well. The post was later deleted by the user.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse search with the viral photo, which led us to news articles and social media posts from 2017 of a separate incident of gangrape and murder in Kotkhai town in Shimla district of Himachal Pradesh, which has been dubbed by the local media as 'Gudiya rape case'.
The social media posts, which contained the viral photos, demanded justice for 'Gudiya' and tagged Himachal Pradesh Police with the posts. We have not included the posts in the article to protect the identity of the victim.
We found a 2018 news report by One India Hindi, which contained the viral images, and provided details about a shoddy investigation on the case. According to the news report, no lawyer was willing to come forward to defend one of the accused, named as Anil Kumar, alias Neelu. It further mentioned that another suspect, named Suraj, died in judicial custody, following which the Central Bureau of Investigation took over and filed a case against nine police officers, including senior officers. It also added that no lawyer was willing to defend the police officers in the case either.
We also found another article by the Hindustan Times, which confirmed the details reported by One India Hindi. The article mentioned the following:
"The crisis reached a tipping point on Wednesday, when Suraj Singh – a Nepalese national accused in the case – was reportedly strangled by another suspect, 32-year-old Rajender Singh, at the Kotkhai police station. What happened at the police station remains a mystery because the two were housed in adjacent cells with minimal security."
The image of the dead body of the girl was also published by Lallantop on August 29, 2017.
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