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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 people thrashing Salim, a soldier who tried to steal garments in a mall

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of people beating and stripping a man in uniform, said to show a Muslim soldier named Salim who had tried to steal garments in a mall. FACTLY says the video instead shows a crowd beating a Uttar Pradesh police constable, Adesh Kumar, after a theft in a Lucknow mall. The review’s conclusion is that the person’s identity and occupation in the post are wrong. To check the video’s context, FACTLY reports searching relevant keywords and finding Hindi regional news coverage of the same footage. One report described a mob beating a police constable for stealing T-shirts in Lucknow. Another report, dated 26 February 2021, identified the constable as Adesh Kumar and said he was caught stealing a T-shirt at V-Mart mall in Hussainganj. FACTLY also reports that this coverage said Lucknow police Commissioner DK Thakur announced Kumar’s suspension after the incident came to light. The review further says another news report covered an FIR against people who beat the constable. It notes that the news reports it consulted did not identify the accused as a Muslim named Salim. Taken together, the described reporting identifies the man in the video as a police constable named Adesh Kumar, not a soldier named Salim; the post’s account therefore misidentifies the person and gives the incident a communal framing not supported by the cited reports.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of a little girl found with a bunch of beggars in Mangalore

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of a crying girl circulated with a story that she had been found with beggars in Mangalore after travelling from Mumbai. FACTLY’s review distinguishes that clip from an older, separate Mangalore story. It reports that the video under review was from Jaitpur village Gurdwara in New Delhi, where the girl had been brought after becoming separated from her family; she was reunited with them that same day. The review describes several checks supporting that identification. Reverse image searches of video screenshots led to a Facebook post from 2020 that shared the same clip but said the girl had been found at Indirapuram Gurudwara. FACTLY also found the same video on YouTube, uploaded on 12 November 2020 with a similar claim. The review then cites an India Today investigation, which identified the location as Jaitpur Gurdwara and reported that the family collected the girl after showing valid ID. The Gurdwara management confirmed to India Today that the video was shot there in 2020. The review also reports that the Mangalore beggars story had circulated since at least 2019 with another video of a sobbing girl, and that FACTLY had separately fact-checked that claim. That distinction matters: the Mangalore story may resemble the caption attached to the clip, but the review says it belongs to a different video. Its evidence identifies the clip in this claim as footage of a girl reunited with her family in New Delhi, not a girl found with beggars in Mangalore.

MediaWiseCrime & justice

Video shoes Trump supporters with disabilities being arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.

Publisher’s rating: Not Legit

The video was circulated with a claim that it showed Trump supporters with disabilities being arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. The review found that the footage instead showed disabled protesters being removed from the Capitol in 2017. The distinction is central: the video is genuine, but its attribution to the 2021 riot is false. [S1: “A YouTube video, which supposedly shows Trump supporters with disabilities being arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, has been making the rounds on social media. However, the footage really shows disabled protesters being removed from the Capitol in 2017, years before the riots took place.”] The review describes checking the video’s provenance with InVid and WeVerify, tools that extract keyframes and find where footage appears online. That search led to a C-SPAN video from 2017 titled “Protesters at health care hearing: ‘No cuts to Medicaid, save our liberty.’” The review says the demonstrators in the circulating video can be heard chanting those words. [S1: “The verification tool led us to this 2017 video from C-SPAN. The video is titled, ‘Protesters at health care hearing: ‘No cuts to Medicaid, save our liberty.’’ This is what the protesters are actually chanting in the YouTube video.”] The review also reports that a keyword search found fact-checks from Reuters and PolitiFact. It attributes to PolitiFact the account that the arrests occurred during a September 2017 demonstration outside a hearing room where senators were discussing a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The review states that U.S. Capitol police arrested 181 people there. These details place the footage in a health-care protest, not the Jan. 6 event. [S1: “According to PolitiFact, yes — the footage is authentic. But what this video really shows is a demonstration from September 2017, when the U.S. Capitol police arrested 181 people outside a hearing room where U.S. senators were discussing a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.”]

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

त्तर प्रदेश के सभी थाना क्षेत्रों में मास्क चैकिंग का 30 दिनों का अभियान चलेगा जिसके चलते अगर कोई भी व्यक्ति मास्क का प्रयोग करते हुए नहीं पाया गया तो उस व्यक्ति को चालन के साथ १० घंटे की अस्थाई कारावास होगी

Publisher’s rating: False

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCrime & justice

Es war Doppelmord. Die Medien haben Details verschwiegen.

Publisher’s rating: Medien haben den Umständen entsprechend ausführlich die Hintergründe des Tatverdächtigen ausgeleuchtet. Zudem enthält der Artikel mehrere Falschbehauptungen etwa über die Art der Taten in Lüneburg oder über die kriminelle Vergangenheit des Verdächtigen.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of a Muslim maid, Haseena mixing urine in the food prepared for her Hindu employer

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post attributed a video of a woman mixing urine into food to a Muslim maid named Haseena, allegedly working for a Hindu employer. FACTLY’s review says the footage instead shows Asha Kaushal, and places the incident in Bhopal in 2011: “The woman who was seen mixing her urine in the food is not a Muslim named Haseena but a person named ‘Asha Kaushal’. This incident reportedly took place at Bhopal in 2011.” To check the attribution, the review reports searching Google for “Bhopal maid urine” and finding a Times of India article. It says that article named Kaushal and described her employer, Mukesh Suri, installing CCTV after household items went missing; Suri reportedly discovered the act while reviewing the footage. The review also reports that News 24 journalist Praveen Dube told India Today that the maid was not Muslim. These details directly contradict the post’s name and religious-identity claims, while linking the video to the reported Bhopal incident. FACTLY adds that Aaj Tak and Dainik Jagran published the same information, and that it had previously fact-checked the video when shared with a similar claim. The supplied excerpt does not include those underlying articles or the earlier fact-check, so their details cannot be independently assessed here.