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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

Video of police digging out a grave to arrest a ‘Peer’ is from India

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing Indian police digging up a grave to arrest a “Peer,” a Sufi spiritual guide. FACTLY’s review identifies the footage as an older video of an arrest in Sialkot, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, rather than an incident in India. It says the person shown was a fake Peer who had told people he would remain in a grave for 40 days, while living with basic amenities and using tunnels dug around the grave. The review describes how it traced the footage: a reverse-image search of screenshots, combined with relevant keywords, led to a similar YouTube video. That video, uploaded on 15 February 2020, was titled “Jali Peer I Went into Grave I Sialkot I Fraud I 2020.” FACTLY reports that its description identified the arrest as taking place at Sadar Police Station in Sialkot, Pakistan, and did not mention India. FACTLY also says it found Pakistani video reports and articles about the same incident. Its account places the arrest in Pakistan and explains a potential source of confusion: Punjab is also the name of a state in India. The review’s evidence therefore ties the circulated footage to the Sialkot incident in Pakistan, not to an Indian arrest.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Recent video of a Muslim man threatening a policeman in the Jahangirpuri area in Delhi

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video circulated as recent footage of a Muslim man threatening a policeman in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri area during communal violence there. FACTLY’s investigation identifies the footage instead as an older incident in Chopda, in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district. Its account says the argument involved a policeman and a fruit vendor’s family over a tempo obstructing buses at the Chopda bus stand, not the Jahangirpuri events. The investigation describes several checks behind that identification. A reverse image search found videos with similar visuals posted on social media since 2018. FACTLY also reports that the Chopda city police station confirmed an incident at the bus stand in 2018, and that the constable involved, Srikant Gangurde, independently described the same dispute and its location. The video’s setting is further supported by the police logo visible on the uniform, which the review says matches Maharashtra Police’s official logo. Taken together, the reported earlier appearances of the footage, local police confirmation, the constable’s account and the visual clue place the video in Chopda in 2018. That evidence does not support presenting it as recent footage from Jahangirpuri; the review explicitly says the video has no connection to the violence there.

FACTLYCrime & justice

‘B Tv News’ about Puneeth Kerehalli’s arrest along with C.R. Madhu and Rubel Mondal in a prostitution case

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a social-media post that used a purported B Tv News screenshot to claim Puneeth Kerehalli had been arrested with C.R. Madhu and Rubel Mondal in a prostitution case. Its review says the screenshot was edited: the person shown in the original image was Raffiqull Islam, whose name and picture had been replaced with Kerehalli’s. The review reports that a Google Reverse Image Search found a similar original photo, which did not show Kerehalli.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of a Dalit man beaten in Uttar Pradesh

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim concerned a video circulating online as showing a Dalit man being beaten in Uttar Pradesh. The review identified the footage as an assault in Shahjahanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, on 13 March 2022. It named the victim as Rajiv Bharadwaj and the person accused of beating him as Prateek Tiwari; the review’s conclusion was that Bharadwaj was not Dalit. Thus, the video was from Uttar Pradesh, but the claim about the victim’s caste was inaccurate. [S1: “The video is from Shahjahanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. However, the victim who was being beaten up in the video is Rajiv Bharadwaj, who is not a Dalit.”] [S1: “Though the video went viral recently, the incident is from 13 March 2022.”] The review describes tracing the video through reverse-image searches of screenshots. It says the same footage appeared in a post from the Samajwadi Party’s official account, which described a person being beaten in Shahjahanpur but did not identify the victim as Dalit. The review also cites a reply by Shahjahanpur’s Additional Superintendent of Police, Sanjay Kumar, identifying Prateek Tiwari as the accused and Rajiv Bharadwaj as the victim. These accounts connect the reviewed claim to the same video and identify the people involved. [S1: “When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, the same video was shared by the official Twitter handle of the Samajwadi Party.”] [S1: “Responding to this tweet, Sanjay Kumar, Addl. Superintendent of Police, Shahjahanpur Police said that the accused is Prateek Tiwari, and the victim is Rajiv Bharadwaj; there was no mention of any Dalit man being beaten up.”] The review further reports that an FIR was registered at Sadar Bazar Police Station on 16 April 2022, more than a month after the incident. It says the FIR named Bharadwaj as the complainant and Tiwari as the main accused, and that the case was not registered under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. That is supporting context reported by the review; its central identification of the victim and video also rests on the police response and the other reporting it examined. [S1: “On 16 April 2022, regarding the incident, an FIR had been registered at Sadar Bazar Police Station, Shahjahanpur District, Uttar Pradesh.”] [S1: “According to the FIR, the date of the incident is more than a month ago, on 13 March 2022. The name of the complainant is given as Rajiv Bharadwaj, the main accused being Prateek Tiwari.”] [S1: “Further, the case has not been registered under any of the sections of ‘The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989’”]

FACTLYCrime & justice

Visuals of police arresting women who pelted stones at Rama Navami procession

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review addresses a social-media post claiming that footage of police accompanying women to a vehicle shows them being arrested for pelting stones at a Sri Rama Navami procession. Its conclusion is that the footage depicts a different event: police escorting people connected to a COVID-19 patient to a quarantine facility in Moradabad, rather than arrests related to Rama Navami stone-pelting. To investigate the footage’s origin, the review says it used reverse image search, which led to an April 2020 local news report showing the same visuals. The review then reports finding multiple other news reports from April 2020. It describes those reports as showing police escorting primary contacts of a COVID-19 patient to quarantine after the patient’s relatives pelted stones at a medical team and police. This identifies both a different setting and a different reason for the police presence than the social-media post alleges. The review distinguishes the viral footage from separate arrests that did take place in connection with Rama Navami stone-pelting incidents in multiple states. It acknowledges those arrests but says the footage in the post is not related to them. Thus, the central issue is not whether stone-pelting or arrests occurred during the celebrations, but whether this particular video depicts those events; the account of the footage’s earlier Moradabad provenance contradicts that identification.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of police finding a pistol hidden in the pocket of a Muslim woman in UP

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video showing a female police officer frisking a woman and taking a pistol from her trouser pocket. The review links those visuals to an April 2022 arrest by Kotwali police in Mainpuri district, Uttar Pradesh. It says the woman was arrested for possessing a pistol and presented in court; the disputed part of the viral claim was her alleged Muslim identity. The post also described her as a teacher, a detail the review addressed separately. The review reports that news coverage identified the woman as Karishma Singh Yadav, from Firozabad, and that Mainpuri police shared a press report naming her. FACTLY also says it contacted Kotwali police, who confirmed that the woman arrested with the pistol was not Muslim. These details directly challenge the identity asserted in the post, rather than disputing that the video showed a pistol being seized from a woman. The review further reports that Mainpuri police clarified she was not a teacher, despite some news reports describing her that way. It says an FIR was available and that the police stated the case was under investigation, including questions about where she obtained the pistol and why she brought it. Thus, the evidence in the review supports the conclusion that the video depicts the Mainpuri arrest, but the claim that the woman was Muslim—and the additional description of her as a teacher—was not supported.