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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Crime & justice fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about crime & justice. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

6,837 published reviews in this topic

dpaCrime & justice

Foto toont hoe Joe Biden een kind betast.

Publisher’s rating: De foto werd bewerkt. In realiteit wees Biden naar de Amerikaanse vlag op het T-shirt van de kleuter toen de foto werd genomen.

The review examines a social-media image presented as showing U.S. President Joe Biden touching a young child. It concludes that the image was altered and that the apparent contact misrepresents what happened: Biden was pointing at the American flag on the child’s T-shirt. The review identifies the child as a toddler and the setting as a Hartford daycare visit. [S1]

FACTLYCrime & justice

Visuals showing a Dalit girl being beaten for bathing in river and contaminating the water

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post attached the video to a specific allegation: that a Dalit girl was beaten for bathing in a river and contaminating its water. FACTLY examined the same video and claim, and traced the visuals to an incident in July 2021 in Pipalwa village, Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh. Its account identifies the people shown as two sisters from a tribal community, not a girl attacked for bathing in a river. To investigate, FACTLY says a Google search using relevant keywords returned multiple news reports that had published the same visuals in July 2021. Those reports described the sisters being beaten by family members because they had spoken by phone with their maternal uncle’s sons. The review also quotes Tanda police station in-charge Vijay Vaskale saying a case had been registered against seven family members. The source therefore gives a different explanation for the video’s setting and the reason for the assault than the social-media allegation. It says the incident involved family members and that no caste discrimination was associated with it. The review’s account supports identifying the viral video as footage of the 2021 assault, rather than footage of a girl punished for bathing in a river.

Soch Fact CheckCrime & justice

A viral photo of jailed Afghan children is not from any prison in Sindh.

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerns a viral photograph showing Afghan children behind bars, which Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Memon said was not taken in any jail in Sindh. The review identifies the picture as one posted on 28 December 2022 by human rights lawyer Samar Abbas. Abbas’s caption described the children as Afghan refugees at a lock-up, while Memon denied that the image showed a jail in Karachi or elsewhere in the province. To check the photograph’s location, Soch Fact Check contacted Abbas and asked him to lead its team to the cell where he had taken it. The team reports that Abbas led them to a cell at the District & Sessions Courts in Karachi, commonly called the City Courts. The review says the team photographed the lock-up there and compared its images with the viral picture. The investigation also reports obtaining a screen recording of Abbas opening the photographs on his phone, including technical details showing when they were taken. Based on the visit, visual comparison and phone-recording evidence, the review concluded that the photograph was genuine and that Memon’s denial about its location was false. It places the cell inside the City Courts in Karachi, Sindh, so the claim that the photograph was not from any prison in Sindh is contradicted by the investigation’s findings.