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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

Sarvodaya Mandir Robbery

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video said to show a robbery at Sarvodaya Mandir in Ghatkopar, Mumbai. FACTLY’s review says the incident depicted in the video happened in Karachi instead, so the video was misidentified as footage from Mumbai. To trace the footage, the review reports that screenshots from the video were checked with Yandex Reverse Image Search. The results included a Dawn News tweet showing the same video, with hashtags identifying Karachi and Pakistan. FACTLY also says it found YouTube videos about the incident, including one titled “Children Arrested by Gulshan Police.” The review further reports finding a news article through a Google search using Urdu keywords. It says that article placed the robbery near Hill Park in Karachi’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal area and reported that Gulshan-e-Iqbal police had arrested two minor children found guilty of robbery. Together, the review’s account of matching footage and Karachi-specific reporting supports its conclusion that the video was not from the claimed Mumbai location.

NewtralCrime & justice

Un adolescente llamado Jose Tomás ha desaparecido en Granada

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a social-media alert saying that a teenager named Jose Tomás had disappeared in Granada. The review describes the alert as an Instagram story that spread on Facebook. It said a boy had been missing for two days from the Casería de Montijo neighborhood and included a contact telephone number. The investigation found that the alert was a prank, not a report of an actual disappearance: the person who answered that number identified himself as the boy in the photograph and said his friends had played the joke, which spread further when a screenshot reached Facebook. [S1: “Está circulando por redes sociales la alerta por desaparición de un chico en la ciudad de Granada. Se trata de un story de Instagram que se ha compartido en Facebook, red en la que se ha hecho viral. La publicación dice que se ha perdido un niño «hace dos días» por el barrio granadino Casería de Montijo. También ofrece un teléfono de contacto.”; “La persona al otro lado del teléfono ha reconocido ser el chico de la fotografía. Según él, la publicación en Instagram stories era una broma que le han gastado sus amigos y que se les habría ido de las manos al haber llegado a Facebook una captura de pantalla.”] The review describes checking the alert against official channels and contacting police in Granada. It says the investigators had not found the usual Civil Guard disappearance notices and that press offices for both the National Police and Civil Guard reported no complaint matching the alert’s details or photograph. The call to the number in the post then supplied a direct explanation of the image and its circulation. [S1: “En Newtral.es no hemos detectado los habituales avisos que la Guardia Civil publica en sus redes sociales cuando se produce una desaparición, por lo que nos hemos puesto en contacto tanto con la Guardia Civil como con la Policía Nacional en Granada. Los gabinetes de prensa de los cuerpos de seguridad han negado haber recibido algún tipo de denuncia que coincida con los datos o la fotografía que se muestra en la imagen, por lo que hemos llamado al número de teléfono que se proporciona en la propia alerta.”; “Según él, la publicación en Instagram stories era una broma”]

FACTLYCrime & justice

A boy tortured by Policemen for not bringing them tea.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a circulating video said to show police torturing a boy because he had not brought them tea. Its review concludes that the tea explanation was false: the boy was accused of theft, and the footage showed police assaulting him. The review also reports that the senior officer seen in the video, Paniyara Police Station Sub-Inspector KN Shahi, was suspended by Uttar Pradesh Police authorities for his conduct. The correction concerns the reason given for the assault; it does not deny that the video shows police torturing the boy. [S1]

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCrime & justice

Der deutsche Täter ist längst verurteilt - doch noch immer werden Artikel über einen Mordfall aus dem Jahr 2018 in sozialen Medien geteilt, in denen ein Migrant verdächtigt wird. In einer Version heißt es «Berlin: Merkel-Migrant ermordet 14-jährige Deutsche mit 20 Messerstichen - Medien schweigen» ), in einer anderen «Flüchtling schächtet 14jährige in Berlin - starb in Armen der Mutter».

Publisher’s rating: Der Täter war kein Migrant, sondern stammt aus einer deutschen Familie. Viele Medien haben rasch und ausführlich über den Fall berichtet.

The claim concerns false social-media posts that cast a migrant or refugee as the killer of Keira, a 14-year-old girl murdered in Berlin in 2018, and suggest that news organizations kept quiet about the case. The review identifies both headlines in the claim: one alleging a “Merkel-Migrant” killed a German girl, and another describing a refugee as the killer. It reports that Keira’s mother found her dying in their Berlin apartment on the evening of March 7, 2018, and that the perpetrator was a 15-year-old German classmate, not a migrant. The review’s chronology directly challenges the suggestion that the case was suppressed. It says investigators made a public appeal on Twitter the day after the killing, and that a dpa report went to a broadcaster about an hour later. Regional and national outlets also reported promptly, with the review naming Berliner Zeitung and Spiegel Online as examples. It contrasts those reports with the unsupported refugee accusation published by halle-leaks.de the day after the murder. The review describes how the migrant allegation developed while the investigation was still underway: on March 9, a police spokesperson said investigators were pursuing all directions, without releasing details. That same day, anonymousnews.ru asserted that the perpetrator was a “Merkel-Migrant” and alleged that witnesses had seen Arabs at the scene—claims the review says investigators had not made. After a suspect was arrested on March 11, the site continued to allege a media cover-up. The review says the suspect, a 15-year-old German schoolmate, confessed that day, and that he was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment on November 22; the court’s stated motive was “pure murder lust.”

Boatos.orgCrime & justice

“Eu estava trabalhando em Recife essa semana, eu fiquei sem voltar e agora a noite a gente saiu num voo das cinco da tarde. Quando estavamos com meia hora de voo, um cara começou a correr dentro do avião gritando Lula livre! Lula livre, Lula livre e correu para a porta de Emergência, e tentou abrir! Ele falou, o avião vai cair eu vou matar todo mundo! As pessoas, o operador de avião e os passageiros agarraram ele e o amarraram, e ele veio gritando o tempo inteiro! Foi um pânico dentro do avião, eu tô passando mal até agora, por que a gente teve que viajar com esse cara gritando mais de duas horas e o piloto chegou a propor parar em outro aeroporto, mas aí todo mundo decidiu continuar”

Publisher’s rating: Falso

NewtralCrime & justice

Foto del detenido por lanzar pirotecnia a un helicóptero de Mossos

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim paired a photograph with a message saying a young man was wanted for launching pyrotechnics at a Mossos d’Esquadra helicopter. Newtral identifies the person in the photograph as YouTuber Auronplay and says the image had previously circulated with other false identities. The review also quotes Auronplay joking about posts that used his face, including one in which he said he had gone from being called a terrorist to a hero. The image claim did not establish who carried out the helicopter attack. Newtral separately reported that Mossos had confirmed the arrest of a 43-year-old man from Santa Maria de Montbui, near Barcelona, over the alleged launch of a flare at a police helicopter flying above protests against the procés verdict in Barcelona. The review says the man was later released provisionally and required to report to court every 15 days while proceedings continued. Thus, its account distinguishes the person shown in the circulating photograph from the man arrested over the incident.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Abhijit Banerjee has defended the Nirbhaya rapists.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post attributed to Abhijit Banerjee the claim that Nirbhaya’s rapists acted because they “had no access to sex,” and presented it as a defence of the rapists. The review checked the timing of the article linked to the post against the timing of the Nirbhaya assault: it says Banerjee’s article on rape was published on 30 October 2012, while the incident took place in December 2012. That chronology means the article could not have been a response defending the perpetrators of that later incident. The review also traced the article shown in the post to TFIPOST. It reports that TFIPOST had deleted the article, but that an archived version remained available; the TFIPOST piece linked to Banerjee’s 2012 Hindustan Times article. The review describes searching for the TFIPOST article and following that link to establish which Banerjee article was being represented. The review says Banerjee discussed inequality in access to sex, but explicitly wrote that “none of this should be read as a defence of rape.” It concludes that his comments were taken out of context to make them appear to justify the Nirbhaya rape. The evidence presented therefore distinguishes discussion of a general issue before the incident from defending the rapists in that specific case.