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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

SOCIAL MEDIA POSTCrime & justice

Hindu woman being assaulted in Pakistan.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim attached a video of a woman being assaulted in Pakistan to the assertion that she was Hindu and attacked because of her religion. The original review identifies the woman as Amrat Shahzadi, daughter of Mohammed Suleman Ansari, and says she was Muslim. It therefore rejects the claim’s characterization of her identity and the alleged religious motive. To check the video’s setting, the review searched for “Woman beaten up by lawyers in Pakistan” and found a Geo TV article containing stills from the video. It reports that the incident happened outside Shakargarh court after a brawl involving Shahzadi, who had come to attend a court hearing. The review also says it found a journalist’s tweet containing an image of the incident’s FIR. According to the review’s account of that FIR, advocates Yasir Khan, Waseem Latif and Asif Sultan dragged Shahzadi from a lawyer’s chamber to the road and attacked her. The review concludes that she was not attacked on the basis of religion. Thus, the video depicts an assault, but the supplied investigation identifies the woman as Muslim and describes a court-related brawl, not an assault for being Hindu.

FACTLYCrime & justice

A Women being beaten up by the Police in Assam.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video circulated as showing women being beaten by police in Assam during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019. FACTLY’s review identifies the footage as showing a different event: a police lathi-charge on Anganwadi workers in Jharkhand in 2019. It says the video is not connected to Assam or the recent protests there. [S1: “The video is related to a lathi-charge on Anganwadi workers by the Police in Jharkhand. It is not related to Assam and the recent protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019.”] To investigate the footage, the review reports that it ran screenshots through Yandex Reverse Image Search. That search returned a video from The Times of India with similar visuals, titled “On cam: Brutal lathicharge on Anganwadi workers in Jharkhand”; FACTLY says that video was uploaded on 25 September 2019. [S1: “When the screenshots of the video were run through the Yandex Reverse Image Search, a video of ‘The Times of India’ with similar visuals was found in the search results.”] [S1: “The video uploaded by ‘The Times of India’ had the following title: ‘On cam: Brutal lathicharge on Anganwadi workers in Jharkhand’ and was uploaded on 25h September 2019.”] The review also says it found the same video in a Dainik Bhaskar article about the Jharkhand Police lathi-charge on Anganwadi workers. Taken together, the matching visual material and the identified Jharkhand coverage support the conclusion that the video was miscaptioned as an Assam incident. [S1: “The same video can be also found in an article by ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ regarding the lathi-charge by the Jharkhand Police on Anganwadi workers.”]

FACTLYCrime & justice

In India, between 2016 to 2018, 84374 rapes were committed and 81,000 rapists were muslims

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns India and asserts that 84,374 rapes were committed between 2016 and 2018, with 81,000 of the rapists being Muslim. The review says the circulated post gave those figures, but distinguishes the claim from what the cited crime records could establish: “NCRB has not yet released the 2018 data.” As a result, the review says the post’s three-year total could not be supported by the available annual reports, since it included a year for which the data had not been released. The review also addresses the claim about the offenders’ religion. It says the National Crime Records Bureau does not report religion for victims or offenders in its crime data, including rape cases. Thus, the figure of 81,000 Muslim rapists is not a statistic that can be derived from the NCRB records described in the review. The review’s conclusion is that neither the combined rape figure nor the religious breakdown is substantiated by those records.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Police shooting at the protestors in Assam.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a circulating video said to show Assam Police shooting protesters. FACTLY’s review identifies the footage as a police mock drill in Jharkhand, not a shooting of protesters in Assam. It states that the police shown are not Assam Police and concludes that the claim is false. To check the location, FACTLY says it compared buildings visible around the scene with building photos on Google Maps. The review reports that this comparison confirmed the drill took place in Jharkhand. Thus the video’s setting and activity contradict the claim attached to it: the footage shows a drill, not police firing on protesters in Assam.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Assam Police atrocities on the public.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim attached to the photo was that it showed Assam Police committing atrocities on the public, amid protests in Assam against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2019. FACTLY’s review says the photo instead shows Uttar Pradesh police beating a demonstrator in Lucknow who was demanding justice for the deceased Unnao rape victim. It concludes that the image was not related to an incident in Assam. To check the image, the review reports using Google reverse image search. The search returned results that led FACTLY to an Asianet News article identifying the scene as a Lucknow protest, and the review says a Free Press Journal article gave the same information. These references support identifying the image’s setting and subjects as different from the Assam claim. The review describes the photo as being shared with a false narrative in the context of the Assam protests. Its account addresses the provenance of the image, not whether police conduct in Assam more broadly involved atrocities.

FACTLYCrime & justice

A boy in Tamilnadu was made to clean toilets with acid as a punishment for wearing Ayyappa mala.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim combines an injury with a specific cause and punishment: that a boy in Tamilnadu was made to clean toilets with acid because he wore an Ayyappa mala. FACTLY identifies the boy in the circulated image as Maharaja, a student at Good Shepherd High School, and says the injury occurred while he was cleaning the school’s chemistry laboratory—not toilets—as part of a group of five students. The review describes how it investigated the image: it searched Google using the phrase “Tamilnadu good shepherd school student acid burns” and found a Times of India result containing a shorter version of the image. FACTLY reports that the article identified Maharaja and described the students as cleaning the chemistry laboratory on the headmaster’s instructions. It also says a New Indian Express article gave the same account. This evidence addresses both the alleged setting and the alleged punishment. The review says the acid spill happened during laboratory cleaning and explicitly states that the boy was not punished for wearing the mala. The image therefore does not establish the story asserted in the post; the review identifies the injury as an accident during a school task rather than punishment for religious dress.