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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.

6,854 published reviews in this topic

FACTLYCrime & justice

Image of Delhi police trying to hit a child with the baton

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns an image shared as showing Delhi police trying to hit a child with a baton during the unrest in Delhi. FACTLY’s investigation says the image was not taken in India: it depicts a Bangladeshi policeman threatening a child during protests in Dhaka. This directly contradicts the image’s attribution to Delhi police. [S1: “An image is being widely shared on Facebook with the claim that it shows Delhi police trying to hit a child with the baton.”; “The image isn’t from India. It shows a Bangladeshi policeman threatening a child with the baton during protests in their country in 2010.”] The review reports that it found the image in Getty Images’ photo library. The accompanying Getty information identifies the scene as clashes involving garment workers in Dhaka on 30 June 2010. That location, date and event establish a different provenance from the Delhi events with which the image was being shared. [S1: “The image in the post was found in the ‘Getty Images’ photo library. As per this information, the image is of a Bangladeshi policeman threatening a child with the baton during clashes with garment workers in Dhaka on 30 June 2010.”] The review places the photograph in the context of protests in Bangladesh over factory workers’ low pay and poor working conditions. It says the protests became violent and clashes followed between workers and police. Thus, although the image does show a policeman threatening a child, the review’s cited provenance places the scene in Bangladesh in 2010, not in Delhi. [S1: “In 2010, workers of garment factories in Bangladesh had protested against low pay and poor working conditions in their factories. When the protests became violent, clashes broke out between the garment workers and the police.”; “To summarize, the image of a Bangladeshi policeman threatening a child with the baton is being shared as that of Delhi Police.”]

FACTLYCrime & justice

Photo of a Delhi policeman throwing stones along with rioters in Delhi

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a photo shared as showing Delhi Police throwing stones with rioters in Delhi. Its investigation identifies the pictured event as a different one: the photo was taken in Lucknow on 19 December 2019 and shows Uttar Pradesh Police, not Delhi Police. The review therefore says the image is not related to the Delhi riots in the claim. The investigation describes two checks. A Google reverse-image search found the same photo on Getty Images, where its description places the scene at demonstrations against India’s new citizenship law in Lucknow on 19 December 2019. FACTLY also notes that the social-media image was cropped; in the full version, the shop address visible in the background suggests Lucknow. Together, the image match and the location clues contradict the claim’s identification of the officers and setting.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video of men with skull caps attacking a bus driver in Jafrabad (Delhi)

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review examines a social-media post claiming that footage of men wearing skull caps attacking a bus driver showed an incident in Jafrabad, Delhi. It reports identifying the same clip in an ABP Majha news video, which located the incident in Aurangabad, Maharashtra, rather than Delhi. The review therefore finds that the video was misidentified geographically. The account in the ABP Majha report, as described by the review, was that a few men beat the driver of a Kannad–Aurangabad–Shirpur bus after the bus had hit their car while the driver was trying to overtake on a highway. The review also cites a Times of India article as carrying the same information. These details describe a dispute following a traffic incident, not evidence that the footage showed the claimed Jafrabad event. On the communal framing, the review says that Kannad Police Sub-Inspector BP Rout told media agencies there was no communal angle and characterized the incident as a personal clash. It also notes that PIB Fact Check called the claim fake. The excerpt does not provide links or further details for those reports, but its stated identification of the matching news footage and the account of the dispute support its conclusion that the Delhi attribution and communal implication were misleading.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Recent video of Police lathi-charge on the rioters in Delhi

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY investigated a video shared as showing Delhi Police lathi-charging rioters during the recent Delhi riots. The footage shows men rallying in a lane and being struck by police, but the review found it had circulated online before those Delhi riots. Its reverse-image search of keyframes located a matching frame in a YouTube video bearing the timestamp 20 December 2019. The review says other search results identified the footage as a police lathi-charge on protesters in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh. The review also searched for reports about the event associated with that earlier date. It found reports that anti-CAA protests in Bulandshahr turned violent on 20 December 2019 after protesters set police vehicles on fire. FACTLY cautioned that it did not find the exact video on a credible media channel. Even so, its identified online appearance in December 2019 predates the Delhi riots, so the footage cannot be a recent recording of police lathi-charging rioters in those Delhi events. The claim presents older footage as if it documented a different, later event.

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: Anurag Mishra threatens delhi police with gun

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned images from the February 2020 Delhi riots showing a man pointing a gun at police. A viral post paired those images with an Anurag D. Mishra Facebook profile and asserted that the arrested man was Mishra, not Sharook, the name attributed to the suspect in reporting cited by the review. The review says Delhi police had arrested the man in the maroon T-shirt and that ANI reported police identified him as Sharook. To check whether the profile belonged to the man in the footage, Fact Crescendo examined the Facebook account. It reported that the account described Mishra as living in Mumbai, working in films, and originally from Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The review also says the account holder had posted that his photo was being falsely linked to the Delhi shooting and that he would take legal action; he shared reports distinguishing him from Anurag K. Mishra, the person arrested in Delhi. The review further reports that the account holder posted two or three live videos saying he was not the person arrested. It also refers to a separate Fact Crescendo Hindi article, which concluded that the Facebook user Anurag D. Mishra and the arrested Sharook were different people. On this basis, the review judged the post identifying Mishra as the gunman false. The excerpt describes the checks and the publisher’s conclusion, but does not provide the underlying Facebook posts, videos, or the linked Hindi article for independent examination.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Person standing behind BJP leader Kapil Mishra in the photo is the one who fired gun shots at protests in Jafrabad, Delhi

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim was that the person standing behind BJP leader Kapil Mishra in a shared photo was the person who fired shots at anti-CAA protesters in Jafrabad, Delhi. FACTLY identifies the two people as different: it says the shooter was Mohammed Sharukh and the person in the photo with Mishra was Rohit Rajput. The review therefore rejects the identification, not the report that a shooting occurred. To identify the shooter, the review refers to a Hindustan Times article describing a man in a red shirt and blue trousers firing several rounds with a pistol in Jafrabad on February 24. It also cites an ANI tweet saying Delhi police identified the shooter as Mohammed Sharukh, and another tweet reporting that he had been taken into custody. The excerpt does not reproduce those reports or provide further detail about the police identification. For the photo, FACTLY says it traced the image to a video of Mishra demanding that police remove anti-CAA protesters from protest areas within three days; the shared photo was a screengrab from that video. The review describes comparing the screengrab with the shooter’s photo, noting differences in hair, beard and face shape. It also reports that Mishra told media agencies the person behind him was his follower, Rohit Rajput, and that a comparison with Rajput’s Facebook profile photo likewise showed a different person. Together, the stated image comparisons and identifications contradict the claim that the man in the photo was the Jafrabad shooter.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCrime & justice

"Die Polizei braucht eure Mithilfe", heißt es in einem Artikel auf der Seite "Eilmeldungen.net". Angeblich werde nach einem fünfjährigen Mädchen gesucht, dass in einem Waldgebiet verschwunden ist. Unter dem Artikel ist als Copyright-Hinweis "Eilmeldungen since 2019" (deutsch: Eilmeldungen seit 2019) angegeben.

Publisher’s rating: Das Mädchen ist bereits seit mehr als vier Jahren spurlos verschwunden. Die damals fünf Jahre alte Inga war am 2. Mai 2015 in einem Wald bei Stendal (Sachsen-Anhalt) zum Holzsammeln aufgebrochen und nicht zurückgekehrt.

The article’s wording invited readers to believe that police were seeking a five-year-old girl who had recently gone missing. The dpa fact-check identifies the child as Inga and explains that she had disappeared years earlier: she was five when she went to collect wood in a forest near Stendal, Saxony-Anhalt, on 2 May 2015, and did not return. Thus the article’s description of her age did not establish that the disappearance was new. The fact-check reports a specific check of the website’s registration: a Whois query found that Eilmeldungen.net was registered on 28 January 2020. By then, Inga had already been missing for four years and eight months. This chronology is central to the assessment of the article’s presentation: it described an old, unresolved disappearance as though it were a current search. The source also gives the circumstances of the 2015 disappearance. Inga was visiting Wilhelmshof, a district of Stendal, with her family; they went to look for wood for a campfire. After she failed to return, authorities began a large search of the area. The supplied report therefore connects the website article to a real case, while showing that its apparent suggestion of a newly missing child was misleading.