A distressing video from Hyderabad, Sindh, showing a group of men digging out the body of a minor girl who was raped and murdered, is being shared on Indian Facebook pages without stating that the incident is from Pakistan.
The viral clip shows a group of men remove debris strewn along a wall before pulling out the body of a girl. A man wearing a white T-shirt flanked by uniformed guards on both sides directs the group to the corner where the body is buried. The men can be heard talking among themselves in Hindi. The viral video, shot on a mobile phone, has a logo of KTN News across it.
BOOM has not included the video owing to its disturbing nature.
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BOOM found that the text accompanying the video on Indian Facebook pages have gotten several details wrong including the name of the accused, the name of the victim and the location of the crime.
The viral video has been shared from right-wing Indian Facebook pages like कट्टर हिंदू राष्ट्र बनाना (Make A Radical Hindu Rashtra) and Yogi The Great CM with Hindi caption which translates to 'Heart wrenching incident. A six-year-old girl raped by a youth named Mohammed. This evil man raped a six-year-old girl in Hyderabad and buried her alive.'
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Another Hindi caption shared along with the video reads 'Heart-wrenching incident. A man named Zainab raped a six-year-old girl. This evil man raped a six-year-old girl in Hyderabad. Not only did he rape her, he buried her alive'.
The caption of the second post appears to have mixed up the name from another rape-and-murder victim from Lahore that shook Pakistan in 2018. Seven-year-old Zainab Ansari, was raped and murdered in Lahore's Kasur district in 2018. The district had seen similar cases since 2015 and the crimes were suspected to be the handiwork of a serial killer. A Pakistani anti-terrorist court had on February 17 sentenced the convicted killer Imran Alii to death. Zainab's death had seen countrywide protests in Pakistan. Read more about it here.
Fact Check
We ran a reverse image search on one of the screenshots from the video and found several articles published in Pakistani newspapers that mentioned that the incident had taken place in Hyderabad city of Sindh province in Pakistan.
According to a report in NewPakWeb, a seven-year-old girl was raped and her body was hidden under debris at Quaid-e-Millat Park in Hyderabad, Sindh on April 29, 2020. GOR police, Hyderabad, had arrested the prime suspect, Siddique Bengali, in connection with the case based on the CCTV footage. Bengali later led the police to the spot where the body was buried.
Read more about the incident here and here.
According to news reports, the arrested suspect had told police that he had convinced the minor girl to accompany him on the pretext of buying new clothes for her.
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The brutal murder of the seven-year-old led to a social media campaign on Twitter under the name #JusticeforRukhsarOdho demanding the culprits to be hanged.
While some news reports claim the girl was raped there were others that speculated the possibility the girl was gang raped. However, BOOM cannot independently verify the same.