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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.

6,853 published reviews in this topic

Vishvas NewsCrime & justice

half-burnt body of a woman found in Uttar Pradesh.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post paired footage of a burning woman’s body with a claim that it showed daughters being killed in Uttar Pradesh. Vishvas News reports that its investigation traced the video to a different incident in Karnataka, making the post’s location claim false. The review says reverse-image searches of keyframes from the video led to a Kannada-language report about a young woman set on fire in Periyapatna, in Mysore district, on 8 November. It also found a Times of India report describing a woman’s body found by the roadside at Kellur village, within Periyapatna police limits. That report said the body was burned from the knees to the head and that police suspected she had been killed elsewhere before being brought there. Vishvas News further reports that The Hindu later described police arrests in the case and that Mysore district Superintendent of Police C. B. Rishyanth confirmed the incident was in Kellur village, Periyapatna. The review’s evidence therefore identifies the footage with the Karnataka case, not an incident in Uttar Pradesh.

FACTLYCrime & justice

A 3-year-old girl was raped and killed in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media video said to show that a three-year-old girl had been raped and killed in Aligarh district, Uttar Pradesh. FACTLY’s review identifies the girl in that video and examines the same incident, rather than a separate crime involving a child of similar age or a different location. It reports that the girl died from injuries sustained in a road accident in Akrabad, not from rape. The review describes how it checked the video: it searched in reverse for screenshots and found a statement posted by Aligarh Police about the incident. According to the review, police said the child died from injuries in a road accident and warned people not to circulate the video with false rape allegations. The review also reports that the Aligarh district SP discussed the accident in a video and rejected the rape allegations. The review cites a further account from the girl’s mother, who said her child died from injuries sustained in a road accident. It places the accident on 4 November 2020, as stated by the SP. Taken together, the police statements and the mother’s account, as reported in the review, contradict the post’s claim that rape caused the girl’s death.

Vishvas NewsCrime & justice

అసోంకు చెందిన కాంగ్రెస్ నాయకుడు అమ్జత్ అలీని యాపిల్స్‌ బాక్స్‌లో ఆయుధాలు మరియు బుల్లెట్లను తరలిస్తుండగా అదుపులోకి తీసుకున్నారు. కాఫిరోను చంపడానికి అతను పథకం వేశాడు. పోలీసులు అరెస్టు చేశారు.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media post alleging that Assam Congress leader Amjat Ali was detained while transporting weapons and bullets in an apple box, and had planned to kill non-Muslims. Vishvas News examined the two photographs in the post separately rather than treating them as evidence of one arrest. Its investigation reported that the person in the first image was Mubarak Hussain, a teacher arrested in Bangladesh in 2018 on sexual-abuse allegations; the second image had appeared in a report about weapons found near Srinagar. The review describes using Google reverse-image searches on each photograph to trace those earlier uses. It also checked the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee website for a leader named Amjat Ali, but reported finding no such leader. To verify that point, the investigators contacted Assam Congress Committee president Ripun Bora, who said there was no leader by that name in the state Congress and called the post baseless. Taken together, the review’s account identifies the photographs as depicting separate, previously reported subjects and events—not an arrest of an Assam Congress leader with weapons in an apple box. The investigation therefore concludes that the viral post was false.

APA - Austria Presse AgenturCrime & justice

Video zeigt Festnahme des Attentäters durch Wiener Polizei.

Publisher’s rating: Das ist falsch. Das Video stammt aus Barcelona.

The claim concerns a video said to show Vienna police arresting the attacker in the aftermath of the Vienna terrorist attack. The APA investigation examined that specific arrest video and concluded that it was not footage from Vienna: it identified the setting as Barcelona. The review explains that the visible “Bus” and “Taxi” road markings were not enough to establish a location, since those words are also used outside German-speaking areas. Instead, it compared the police vehicles and the yellow roadside markings with features it said were not typical in Austria. Comparing the vehicles with European police cars led the investigators to suspect Spain; the check then found a close match to Catalan police vehicles, including their checked markings. To corroborate the location, the review describes finding a video tweet that attributed the incident to Barcelona. It says media reports and additional videos on Twitter confirmed that location. Thus, the evidence addresses the claimed arrest video itself and supports the conclusion that it was misidentified as footage of the Vienna attacker’s arrest.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of French police assaulting a Muslim woman

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns footage presented as showing French police assaulting a Muslim woman. FACTLY reports that the video instead depicts a 2017 incident in Calgary, Canada: a Calgary police officer slammed a handcuffed Black woman to the floor while trying to remove her headscarf. The review says the footage had no connection to the events in France to which it was being linked. To investigate, FACTLY says it ran a reverse image search on screenshots from the video. It found similar visuals in a Daily Mail article, which described the incident as involving Calgary constable Alex Dunn and Dalia Kafi. According to the review’s account of that reporting, Dunn was charged with assault causing bodily harm over the arrest, and the footage was later shown at his trial. The review also identifies reporting on the same incident by Global News and CBC. It says Kafi had been arrested in 2017 for breaching a court-ordered curfew and that her nose bones were cracked when her face hit the ground. These details place the video in Calgary and identify the woman and officer, rather than supporting the French-police attribution.