PeakMetrics / Fact Checks
Crime & justice fact checks
Explore claims publishers have checked about crime & justice. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.
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Claim: Police officer attacked Jamia Millia Islamia protestor
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerns a photograph circulated as showing a police officer stepping on a protester’s neck during the Jamia Millia Islamia protest in Delhi. Fact Crescendo says it investigated whether that image was actually taken during the Jamia protest. Its review identifies the post as one shared by Yasin Basha on December 15, 2019, with a caption linking the picture to Jamia.
50 fake journalists with lethal weapons arrested in karnataka
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
Um ein angebliches "Skandalurteil" dreht sich ein Artikel, der in den sozialen Medien verbreitet wird. Trotz einer "Gruppenvergewaltigung", so der Begriff in der Überschrift, seien sieben Angeklagte freigesprochen worden. Lediglich "2 Mal Sexualtherapie" habe das Gericht verhängt.
Publisher’s rating: Alle neun Angeklagten wurden vom Vorwurf der Vergewaltigung freigesprochen. Zwei wurden wegen der Verbreitung jugendpornografischer Schriften und sexuellen Übergriffs dazu verurteilt, das Gespräch mit einem Sexualtherapeuten zu suchen.
The social-media article’s framing says that seven defendants were acquitted in a group-rape case and that only two received “sexual therapy.” The dpa review identifies the case as the trial concerning the alleged rape of a 14-year-old in Harsewinkel, in the district of Gütersloh. Its account says the Bielefeld Regional Court acquitted all nine young defendants of rape, while two faced separate convictions involving sexual misconduct and the distribution of material classified as child pornography. The claim’s reference to seven acquittals therefore omits two of the defendants and obscures the difference between the rape charge and the other offenses. The review explains that the court could not prove the rape and serious-abuse allegations. It reports that one defendant had touched the girl’s bare breast, while another filmed her undressed and heavily intoxicated and forwarded the footage to acquaintances. For those separate offenses, the two men were ordered to attend a short intervention with a sexual therapist for eight hours each. Thus, the “sexual therapy” detail refers to a specific court-ordered intervention, not a punishment for rape; the account does not say that the rape charge was proved.
Policeman in Bengaluru tried to threaten historian Ramchandra Guha with a fist while detaining him
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
In einem Artikel vom 17. Dezember 2019 wird behauptet, "Mitte Dezember" sei in Berlin ein Drogenhändler festgenommen worden. Obwohl als Gefährder bekannt, sei er wieder freigelassen worden. "Das berichtete der RBB" heißt es mit dem Verweis auf ein Video über dem Artikel.
Publisher’s rating: Der RBB-Beitrag stammt aus dem Februar 2018. Der Mann wurde bereits 2017 in Gewahrsam genommen und wieder freigelassen. Wenige Monate später wurde er erneut festgenommen.
The claim concerns an article published in December 2019 that presented a Berlin drug dealer, described as a known security threat, as having been arrested and then released “in mid-December,” citing an RBB video. The dpa fact-check identifies the man as Tunisian national Fathi Ben M. and distinguishes the actual events from the later presentation of the video. Its account says the release followed a detention in 2017, not an arrest in December 2019. [S1: “Am 03. Dezember 2017 wurde der tunesische Staatsangehörige Fathi Ben M. nach einer Ingewahrsamnahme wieder freigelassen, wie aus einem Protokoll des Berliner Abgeordnetenhauses hervorgeht”] The review dates the RBB Abendschau report to February 6, 2018, and says Ben M. was arrested again by Berlin police on February 10, 2018, after which he was held in deportation custody. This chronology shows that the December 2019 article’s description of a fresh mid-December arrest followed by release misrepresented older events. [S1: “Am 10. Februar 2018 wurde er demnach von der Berliner Polizei erneut festgenommen. Anschließend kam er in Abschiebehaft.”] The dpa account says the 2017 release is documented in a Berlin parliamentary committee record and that the RBB report had already aired in February 2018. It also traces the video’s later online appearance: a recording of the RBB broadcast was uploaded to YouTube on December 12, 2019, and the review reports that it was the same length as the video embedded above the December 17 article. That provenance helps explain how an older report could be presented alongside a claim about a new arrest. [S1: “Fast zwei Jahre später, am 12. Dezember 2019 wurde ein Mitschnitt der RBB-Sendung bei Youtube hochgeladen”] [S1: “Er hat dieselbe Länge wie das auf ‘19vierundachtzig.com/’ präsentierte Video”]
Police beating people in Assam who didn't make it to the NRC list
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
Delhi Police thrashing a student at Jamia Milia Islamia University.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The review examines a social-media video presented as showing Delhi Police thrashing a student at Jamia Millia Islamia University, in connection with recent anti-CAA protests. It concludes that the footage instead shows an incident at the Red Fort in New Delhi in January 2014, so it does not document the claimed Jamia event. The review states that the video was “not related to Jamia University or the recent anti-CAA protests.” To trace the footage, the investigators ran screenshots through Yandex Reverse Image Search and found the same video circulating in 2014. The review also points to a January 2014 News 18 post describing it as Delhi policemen beating a civilian, and to the same video posted by the Aam Aadmi Party’s official Facebook account that month. The review adds that Delhi Police suspended three policemen after the Aam Aadmi Party posted the video in 2014. It cites an NDTV article reporting that police said the man in the footage was a pickpocket. These details concern the older Red Fort incident, not a student at Jamia.
Delhi police thrashing a Jamia student over CAA protests.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The post used a photograph of a person beneath police officers and presented it as showing Delhi police assaulting a Jamia Millia Islamia student during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. FACTLY’s review concludes that the image does not depict that event: it says the incident pictured took place in 2011, and identifies the person under the police officers’ shoes as Anand Bhadauriya, a Samajwadi Party leader. The review states that the photograph has no connection to the CAA protests. [S1] To investigate the image’s history, the review says it used Google reverse-image search. That search led to a 2016 Lallantop article, which described the image as showing Anand’s face being trampled under the shoes of a deputy inspector general. The review also searched the Hindi text from that article and found a Catch News article containing the same photograph. [S1] The review reports that Catch News captioned the image as Bhadoria under the shoes of DK Thakur and credited its capture to photojournalist Pramod Adhikari. It then searched with 2011 as a time filter and found a 2011 Bhadas4Media article containing the same image as a newspaper clipping. Together, these reported image matches and earlier appearances support the review’s conclusion that the photograph was miscaptioned as a recent assault on a Jamia student. [S1]
網傳「一位徐小姐下班後，在回家的路上看到一個小孩子在哭...找到小女孩的家之後，她按了門鈴，可是，門鈴像是有高壓電般，她瞬間失去了知覺.....當徐小姐醒來之後才發現........自己被全身脫光」，經查：警政署刑事局表示，台灣迄今未有相關報案紀錄。請民眾毋須恐慌。此傳言於2005年即以英文版本流傳，美國查核組織判斷為假訊息。此傳言為「錯誤」訊息。
Publisher’s rating: 錯誤
The claim describes a woman who allegedly takes a lost child home, is knocked unconscious by an electrically charged doorbell, and later wakes stripped in an isolated building. The Taiwan FactCheck Center’s report addresses that same story: its background reproduces a version naming 徐小姐, and its conclusion discusses whether the reported event occurred in Taiwan and where the rumor came from. The review says the Criminal Investigation Bureau reported no record of the described incident in Taiwan and advised the public not to panic. Its conclusion rests on that police response, not on a documented investigation of a particular victim or a specific location. [S1] For the rumor’s history, the review says it found an English-language version with broadly similar details, circulating in the United States, and identifies a 2005 Snopes fact-check. The Taiwan review reports that Snopes found no related U.S. news reports and considered the alleged crime method substantially unlike most sexual assaults. These are the review’s account of Snopes’s findings; the supplied text does not include Snopes’s original article for independent examination. [S1] The review also describes the message as an older rumor that reappeared in Taiwan in different versions, sometimes attributed to organizations or businesses, and notes that some versions placed the story in different settings. This variation matters: the evidence presented concerns the circulating narrative, not a verified report establishing that the alleged attack happened. The review’s stated basis for its conclusion is the absence of a related police report in Taiwan and the earlier U.S. fact-check it cites. [S1]
Video shows cops beating Jamia students
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The review examines a video circulated during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act with a caption placing the incident in the Jamia area. It identifies the key question as whether the footage showed police beating Jamia Millia Islamia students in those ongoing protests. Its investigation concludes that the clip was older and unrelated to them: the review says it dates to 12 January 2014.
“Nearly 40,000 lives are cut short every year from gun violence. An average of 47 children and teenagers are killed by guns every single day.”
Publisher’s rating: Four Pinocchios
“In the 266 days since we sent this bill, about 25,000 people have died from gun violence in our country, 47 percent of them teenagers or children younger than that.”
Publisher’s rating: Four Pinocchios
El art. 100.2 del Reglamento Penitenciario dice que para gozar de beneficios penitenciarios es imprescindible arrepentirse del delito y no tener intención de reincidir
Publisher’s rating: Falso
The claim concerned a statement by Javier Maroto, made on December 11, about the nine imprisoned leaders of the Catalan independence movement commonly called the procés. Maroto said that article 100.2 made repentance and a commitment not to reoffend indispensable conditions for prisoners to receive penitentiary benefits. The review says it checked the Penitentiary Regulations and found that neither article 100.2 nor any other provision in those regulations imposes those requirements.
In 2006 Rahul Gandhi gang raped a woman named Sukanya Devi.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The review addresses the specific allegation that Rahul Gandhi was involved in the 2006 gang rape of a woman named Sukanya Devi. It reports that India Today’s October 2012 account said the Supreme Court quashed the charges, finding “not even an iota of evidence” to prove that the alleged rape happened on the day in question. The review also says the Court found no truth in the allegations against Gandhi. The review describes the Court’s action as dismissing the 2006 case against Gandhi in 2012, and reports that the Court fined former Samajwadi Party MLA Kishore Samrite for filing a false case. It also refers to a Times of India article reporting that Gandhi had filed an affidavit denying the accusations. Taken together, the review presents the Supreme Court’s reported findings—not merely Gandhi’s denial—as the decisive evidence against the claim.
網傳「有一群人逐家逐戶拍門， 假裝是內政部官員......為即將舉行的選舉(或公投)預備(或調查)。他們其實是入屋打劫。」，經查：內政部警政署表示，台灣並無類似案件。此為舊謠言再起。此傳言的出處，是南非內政部在2017年10月和2019年4月發布的推文公告。此類案件發生在南非，並不是台灣。因此，此訊息為「錯誤」。
Publisher’s rating: 錯誤
The claim concerns a circulating warning that people were knocking on doors in Taiwan while pretending to be Ministry of the Interior officials, supposedly checking identity documents for an approaching election or referendum, but actually attempting to rob homes. The investigation reports that Taiwan’s National Police Agency said it had issued no such warning and that the alleged scenario was not occurring in Taiwan. The agency had already addressed the warning on the 165 anti-fraud website in October 2018, identifying it as a rumor about events in South Africa. To investigate the warning’s origin, the Taiwan FactCheck Center compared the Taiwanese version with material from South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs. It found that the department had issued a news release and social-media post in October 2017, and another post in April 2019, warning of criminals using official-looking documents to claim they needed to check identity documents before entering homes to rob people. The center reported that the Taiwanese message was broadly similar to those official posts. The review also notes that the warning circulated internationally in different forms, with references adjusted for local circumstances—for example, changing an election to a census. South Africa’s department later posted on September 2, 2019, that the warning continued to circulate on social media but that it had received no further complaints; it also said officials would not visit people at home to verify identity documents. The review’s evidence therefore identifies the warning’s documented origin and distinguishes that South African scenario from the claim that it was happening in Taiwan.
Delhi Police personnel burning the bus.
Publisher’s rating: FALSE
The claim concerned a viral video in which Delhi Police personnel appear beside a bus during a fire. Some viewers interpreted the liquid being poured onto the bus as fuel and alleged that officers had set it alight to frame protesters. The review says the video itself does not establish what the liquid was, so that interpretation was not confirmed by the footage alone. To check the allegation, the review identifies the bus in the video by its registration number, DL 1PD 0299, and compares its appearance with footage of the same bus uploaded by India TV on 16 December 2019. It reports that the bus was in the same condition in both videos. That comparison weighs against the allegation that police had burned it: as the review explains, a bus set on fire would have been charred. The review also reports that South-East Delhi DCP Chinmoy Biswal and Delhi Police PRO Mandeep Randhawa said officers were trying to douse the fire. Biswal’s account was that police asked residents for water while a mob was setting fire to property, and that officers saved this particular bus using water from a bottle. Taken together, the review’s comparison of the bus’s condition and the reported police explanation contradict the claim that officers were burning the bus. It concludes that the claim is false.
Unas pandillas robando a conductores en carreteras colocando un carrito de bebé en un extremo de la carretera para que se detenga el conductor y poder asaltarle
Publisher’s rating: Falso
The claim says gangs in rural areas place a baby stroller at the roadside to induce drivers to stop and then attack them. Newtral examined that specific viral warning, which also described men being beaten and robbed and women being abducted and assaulted. The review reports that the Guardia Civil, which has authority over roads, said it had no knowledge of this type of robbery occurring. That is the investigation’s central evidence against the warning’s account; the excerpt does not describe a specific incident or identify a victim, location, or police case supporting it. Newtral also noted signs that the warning had been translated from English: it told readers to call 911, which the review says is an emergency number in the United States and various Latin American countries, but not in Spain. This detail supports the review’s assessment of the message’s provenance, but it is not itself evidence about whether a particular robbery occurred. The conclusion reported by the review rests chiefly on the Guardia Civil’s stated lack of knowledge of such cases.