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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.

6,849 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYCrime & justice

Old dancing video of nine-year-old boy Indra Meghwal who was allegedly beaten to death by a teacher

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim identifies the boy in a dancing video as Indra Meghwal, a nine-year-old allegedly beaten to death by a teacher in Rajasthan. FACTLY’s investigation found that the boy shown was instead Harish Bheel, a class-II student at a government school in Barmer district. The review says it compared images of Indra with the boy in the video and found them different. The review traced the clip to a longer school-performance video. It reports finding an earlier YouTube upload dated 4 August 2022, then locating a Facebook post by the school dated 30 July 2022. That post described a confident performance by class-II student Harish on a “No bag day”; FACTLY says the viral clip was a trimmed version of the school video. The identification was also supported by people connected with the school and the deceased child’s family. A teacher at the school told FACTLY the dancer was Harish, not Indra. The review further reports that the school headmaster gave the same identification to India Today, and that Indra’s father confirmed to India Today that the dancer was not his son. The review’s evidence therefore contradicts the video’s claimed identification; it does not dispute the reported death of Indra.

המשרוקית של גלובסCrime & justice

המשטרה הוסיפה 12 מחלקי משפחה בתחנות משטרה בערים ערביות

Publisher’s rating: לא נכון ברובו

Omar Bar-Lev, then public security minister, said that 12 family-violence units had been added that year at police stations in Arab towns. The Globes investigation checked whether these units had actually been established, and where. It compared government implementation documents and information from the Public Security and Welfare ministries with responses from the police about the planned locations. The investigation found that the government had approved an expansion, but the units had not yet begun operating. The ministry said that 23 police positions had been allocated to establish 11 units, and that only six positions had been filled; the remaining positions were planned for later in 2022. The Welfare Ministry confirmed that 7.2 million shekels had been transferred for the 11 units. These figures do not support Bar-Lev’s claim that 12 units had already been added. The location list also undercut his description of the expansion as being exclusively in Arab towns. The police named 11 locations, including Rahat, Nazareth and Kafr Qasim, as well as places such as Modiin Illit and Kiryat Gat. The review concluded that five were in Arab towns or neighborhoods and one was in the mixed city of Acre. Thus, the announced plan was both smaller than claimed and not limited to Arab localities; it was a plan for future units, not evidence that 12 had already been established.

dpaCrime & justice

Bruce Reinhart, de rechter die de huiszoeking bij Mar-a-Lago goedkeurde, is hier te zien op een foto met Ghislaine Maxwell op de 'Lolita Express' van Jeffrey Epstein.

Publisher’s rating: De foto is bewerkt en toont helemaal niet Bruce Reinhart. In werkelijkheid was het Epstein zelf die een massage kreeg van Maxwell.

The claim concerned a social-media image said to show Bruce Reinhart, the Florida judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago search, receiving a foot massage from Ghislaine Maxwell in Epstein’s private jet. The review says the image was being circulated amid attention to the search of Donald Trump’s estate on August 8, 2022, and to Reinhart’s role in authorizing it. The photo did not establish that Reinhart had such a connection to Maxwell: the review identifies the image as manipulated. To check it, the publisher reports using a Google reverse image search. That search led to the original photograph, which shows Maxwell giving a massage to Jeffrey Epstein—not Reinhart. The review says the original image had been released as evidence in Maxwell’s December 2021 trial concerning the intimate relationship between Maxwell and Epstein. Thus, the altered image substituted Reinhart for the person actually shown in the source photograph. The review also traces the material used to create the alteration. It says the edited image carried the watermark of the Instagram account “What I Meme to Say,” while the photo of Reinhart used in the edit came from his personal Facebook profile and dated from 2017. The review separately notes a documented connection between Reinhart and Epstein-related legal proceedings: he represented several of Epstein’s employees in 2008. That background is distinct from the photo and does not make Reinhart the person depicted in the original image.

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: Rapid FactCheck: காணாமல் போன இந்த சிறுமி மங்களூரில் கிடைத்தாரா? I is this missing girl child found in mangalore with beggars

Publisher’s rating: Fact Crescendo தமிழ் Rating: FALSE

The claim attached a Mangalore missing-child story to a circulating photograph, saying the girl had been found with beggars. Fact Crescendo says it investigated the photograph after a reader asked whether the claim was true and after seeing people share it on Facebook as fact. The review concludes the Mangalore identification is not reliable. Its central finding is that the same photograph had circulated in earlier, conflicting stories about the girl’s identity and location. The review says the image had been used in 2019 for a claim that the girl was from Vellore and attended a government school. It also refers to earlier claims placing her in Pakistan or Bihar. In the review’s account, the image was reused with a new Mangalore story, rather than establishing that the pictured girl was the missing child described in that claim. The excerpt does not provide details of an independent identification, a missing-person record, or a direct examination of the girl’s identity. It says Fact Crescendo had published a prior investigation, but that earlier article is not included here. The conclusion supported by this excerpt is therefore that the Mangalore identification is an unsupported reuse of an old photograph—not that the excerpt independently establishes who the girl actually is.

Boatos.orgCrime & justice

POLICIAL SÓ TEM Q. ANDAR ARMADO EM SERVIÇO, NA FOLGA VAI DEIXAR ARMA NO QUARTEL; VAMOS CRIAR UM REDE SOCIAL PRÓPRIA PARA MONITORAR PMs EM TEMPO INTEGRAL; A POLİCIA TEM Q. ENTENDER Q.O BANDIDO TBM É UM CIDADÃO DE BEM; HAVENDO OCORRÉNCIA COM MORTE, O POLICIAL SERÁ EXONErADO;

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim reproduces a circulating message attributing statements about police officers, firearms, monitoring police, people accused of crimes, and dismissal after a fatal incident to Fernando Haddad, then a candidate for governor of São Paulo. The review says the message also included a claim that he wanted to abolish Rota. It concludes that Haddad did not make the attributed statements. The review describes how it assessed the allegation: it searched for the statements and reports that it found no corresponding social-media post, video, or account in reliable sources. It also says the message appeared to originate in social-media circulation, rather than citing a verifiable source. The article points to the message’s vague wording, alarmist tone, language errors, and lack of reliable supporting sources as reasons for suspicion; those features are supporting observations, while the reported search for corroboration is the more direct check. The review’s conclusion covers the claims in the circulated message, not just the excerpted lines in the claim: it says Haddad made no such statements about police or people accused of crimes and did not say he would end Rota. The supplied excerpt does not provide search logs or identify the particular social-media posts examined, so the account of the checking is limited to the methods and findings the review itself reports.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaCrime & justice

තරුණ ස්වාමීන් වහන්සේගේ සහ තරුණියගේ ඥාතීත්වය පොලීසිය තහවුරු කරාද ?

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The review investigated posts claiming that the young monk and woman in a widely shared video were biological siblings, and that police had identified them while they were travelling to visit their mother, who had cancer. It says the posts did not specify which police station supposedly confirmed this. The review also notes that the video showed local residents speaking about the pair, but did not show either of them explaining what had happened. The claim therefore concerned police confirmation of the pair’s relationship, not merely what viewers inferred from the video. [S1]

FACTLYCrime & justice

The judiciary of Dubai has ordered that a rapist be executed within 15 minutes of the incident. The video in the post shows the execution of the rapist

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim combines two assertions: that Dubai authorities ordered a rapist executed within 15 minutes of an assault, and that the accompanying video shows that execution. FACTLY reports that the post’s video depicts a public execution, but says it was from Yemen, not Dubai. The review identifies the executed man as Hussein Abdullah Al-Saket and says he was accused of abducting, raping, and killing a five-year-old girl.

המשרוקית של גלובסCrime & justice

רוב הצמרת של שב"ס היא נשית

Publisher’s rating: לא נכון ברובו

The claim concerns MK Merav Ben Ari’s statement that “most of the IPS leadership is female.” She made it while responding to calls for women not to enlist in the Israel Prison Service (IPS), following the Gilboa Prison affair known in the media as the “pimping of female guards.” The review examined whether women actually made up a majority of the service’s senior officers, rather than whether women were well represented compared with other security organizations. The review says it checked gender figures in the Ministry of Public Security’s explanatory material for the 2021–2022 budget. For 2020, women made up 20.6% of IPS personnel and 34.3% of junior officers. Among senior officers, 97 of 282 were women—34.4%, according to the detailed account. The review also reports that IPS spokespersons defined senior officers as those holding the rank of deputy commissioner or higher and confirmed that the 2020 figures remained current at the time of the review. These numbers establish that women were a substantial minority, not a majority, of senior officers. The review adds an important qualification: women’s representation in senior IPS ranks was comparatively high against other security bodies, and did not consistently fall as rank increased up to deputy commissioner. That comparison may support a narrower point about women’s advancement, but it does not support the claim that most of the IPS leadership was female. The review therefore concludes that Ben Ari’s statement was mostly incorrect.