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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

dpaCrime & justice

"Ces" policiers ne pouvaient rien faire contre la ruse d'un cafetier aux Pays-Bas qui a vendu ses chaises 5 euros à des clients (avec une bière dessus)

Publisher’s rating: La rumeur comporte une photo d’archive utilisée à mauvais escient et un texte comportant de nombreux éléments factuellement faux selon les autorités néérlandaises.

The post claimed that a pub owner in the Netherlands sold terrace chairs for €5, each with two beers, so customers could drink outside despite restrictions, and that police could do nothing about it. The review found that the photograph used to support the story showed a different event: police checking the 1.5-metre distance between café terrace tables in June 2020, not confronting customers who had bought chairs. The café manager also said the image came from an old article and that his café had nothing to do with the alleged chair sale. The review traced the image to a Volkskrant article published on 1 June 2020. Photographer Arie Kievit told dpa that he took it on that date in Haarlem; the review used Google Maps to locate the scene on Damstraat, and identified the terrace as Café Koops based on the bartender in the photograph. The café manager confirmed that it was an old image. These details establish that the photograph predates the 2021 claim and was reused with a misleading story. The review also checked the claim about police being powerless. Noord-Holland police spokesperson Willem Gijtenbeek called the story false and said the police did not know of such a method. BOA Bond spokesperson Ruud Kuin said police could act: he stated that creating a terrace in this way was prohibited and that permits applied to hospitality businesses, not individuals with chairs. The post therefore combined an unrelated archive photo with claims about the chair scheme and police response that the cited Dutch authorities disputed.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Videos of police beating citizens for coming out during the latest night curfew in Telangana

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned videos circulating as footage of Telangana police beating people for coming outside during the state’s newly imposed night curfew. The review says that curfew ran from 9 PM to 5 AM from 20 April through 30 April 2021, ending at 5 AM on 1 May. Its central finding was that the videos predated this curfew and therefore did not show incidents connected to it. The review describes checking three videos separately. For the first, it searched relevant keywords and used a time filter; it found an upload from March 2020. For the second, it ran screenshots through Google Reverse Image Search and found the same video posted by the Sach News YouTube channel in March 2020. For the third, it found an upload by a Facebook user in March 2020. These earlier posting dates are the key evidence against the videos being footage of the April 2021 curfew. The investigation qualified its conclusion: it said it could not independently verify the exact locations shown in the videos. Its conclusion was specifically that the videos were old and not related to the latest Telangana curfew, rather than a verification of where each scene occurred.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of journalist Pragya Mishra’s murder for speaking about the role of Kumbh Mela in increasing covid cases

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim attached to the video was that it showed journalist Pragya Mishra being murdered for speaking about the Kumbh Mela’s role in increasing COVID-19 cases. FACTLY reports that the video instead shows a man stabbing his wife in Delhi’s Rohini; it says the incident had nothing to do with Mishra. The review identifies the woman as Neelu and the man as Harish Mehta, and reports that he suspected her of having an extramarital affair. To investigate, FACTLY says keyword searches on YouTube found news reports containing the same video, including a report describing a stabbing in Delhi’s Budh Vihar. It then says a Google search led to an Indian Express report about the incident. The review attributes the account of the suspected motive and the Rohini location to DCP Tayal as reported by the Indian Express. The review also cites a video message shared in a tweet by Mishra. According to FACTLY, she said she was in home isolation under COVID-19 protocol and clarified that she was not the person in the viral murder video. Taken together, the review’s reported identification of the footage as a domestic killing and Mishra’s denial contradict the post’s identification of the victim and its asserted motive.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaCrime & justice

අතුරුදහන්ව ඇති දැරියක් බව පවසමින් හුවමාරු වූ ව්‍යාජ සටහනක්!

Publisher’s rating: False

The investigation concerns a Facebook post, first shared in March 2018, that presented a photograph of a young girl as Chetani, a missing child in Sri Lanka, and asked people who saw her to call a number. The article says the post had circulated widely and that the same photograph was used to support the missing-child claim. Its conclusion is that the post was false: the girl shown was not a missing child in Sri Lanka. To check the post, the investigators called the phone number printed in it, 0715465780, and found it disconnected. They also used Google image search to identify the girl in the photograph. The article identifies her as Ayat Sheikh, a young girl living in Mumbai, India, who had appeared in a video answering general-knowledge questions at age four. The post’s image, the article reports, came from that video rather than from evidence that a Sri Lankan child had disappeared. The review further compares the circulated image with footage posted to the Wonder Girl AYAT YouTube channel in 2015, reporting that the image and video show the same sequence. It also notes that Ayat’s Facebook account contained information and videos about her. Taken together, the image match and the identified source footage establish that the photo was repurposed to make a false missing-child appeal; the article does not present the disconnected phone number as its sole basis for that conclusion.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Police arrested a Burqa-clad man affiliated to RSS for waving a Pakistan flag

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video said to show police arresting an RSS-affiliated man in a burqa for waving a Pakistani flag. FACTLY reports that the video instead shows an arrest in Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, connected to liquor smuggling. It says the men were disguised as women and that the man in the video was arrested for bootlegging liquor into Andhra Pradesh. The review describes two checks: reverse-image searches of screenshots from the circulating video led to an article publishing images from that video, and a YouTube search found a news-channel report about the same Kurnool incident. FACTLY says the reports identified the arrest as related to bootlegging, not a flag or RSS affiliation. The review also reports that Kurnool SP Fakkeerappa Kaginelli clarified the case concerned smuggling non-duty-paid liquor from Telangana to Andhra Pradesh. Taken together, the reported location, purpose of the arrest and police clarification contradict the post’s account of the video.