A graphic video has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim it shows two Islamist extremists killing a Hindu man in the Indian state of Rajasthan during India’s COVID-19 lockdown.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:, GRAPHIC, Show, Hide, The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “A Hindu man in Mandawa, Rajasthan had to pay the price after he told the Jihadi terrorist to stay away from his house during the lockdown. He was killed by them. The administration is requested to arrest the culprits immediately. It will be difficult to handle if our patience is broken.”, Mandawa is a small town in northeastern Rajasthan., The post circulated after the\xa0Indian government put the country\xa0under a 21-day lockdown in a bid\xa0to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown was extended for another 19 days on April 14, 2020, as reported\xa0by AFP., , The video was also shared alongside a similar claim\xa0on Twitter here and on Facebook here and here., But the claim is false., A Yandex reverse image search with video keyframes extracted with InVID-WeVerify, a digital verification tool, found the same footage was published on YouTube here on March 24, 2020. The YouTube channel is called “gujranwala city”, which is a city in Pakistan’s Punjab province., The video’s Urdu-language caption translates to English as: “Incident in Chak 179 GB, Gojra Tehsil has come to light. Noma Shahid being axed by the relatives of the girl’s family whom he liked.”, Local police said the violent incident shown in the video took place in March 2020 in Toba Tek Singh, a district in central Punjab., "This incident happened in the jurisdiction of our police station. Accused persons have been arrested and sent to prison and investigations are in progress," Muhammad Ataullah, a Toba Tek Singh police official, told AFP by phone on April 24, 2020., A Pakistani journalist in AFP\s Islamabad bureau analysed the footage. He found a male voice could be heard saying\xa0"Who?" and "Yes" in Punjabi from the eight-second mark\xa0to the ten-second mark in the video., Several Pakistani media outlets also published reports on the attack in Toba Tek Singh; for example The Express Tribune and Dawn, two English-language daily newspapers., The Express Tribune reported that the victim’s in-laws “severed his arms and legs with an axe to avenge his marriage with the woman of their family.”, The Press Trust of India, an Indian news agency, also reported on the incident in an article that was published here on March 27, 2020, by The Hindu, a major English-language newspaper., Police in Rajasthan wrote on Twitter\xa0that the footage does not show\xa0an attack in their state, as they urged social media users to stop sharing the misinformation., #FakeNewsAlert🚨~ 🙈🙊🙉#मांडवा, जैसलमेर में हुई घटना का मुख्य आरोपी गिरफ़्तार।\n\t\tघटना का वायरल हुआ वीडियो निकला #fake, वायरल वीडियो था #पाकिस्तान के फैसलाबाद का।#Fakevideo वायरल करने वालो पर होगी कड़ी कार्यवाही।\n\t\tहमारी अपील: सच समझें, सच का साथ दे।#FakeNews ना फैलाएं।, , The Hindi-language tweet translates to English as:\xa0"Main culprit in the Mandawa, Jaisalmer incident has been arrested. The viral video of the incident is fake, it is from Pakistan\s Faisalabad. Strict action will be taken against those who released this fake video. Don\t spread #fakenews.", , , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Footage of axe attack in Pakistan circulates as sectarian hoax in India after COVID-19 lockdown | AFP Fact Check