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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

Police lathi-charge on unemployed youth who were protesting in front of MP CM’s residence

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a video said to show police lathi-charging unemployed young people protesting outside the Madhya Pradesh chief minister’s residence. The review says the footage was not from Madhya Pradesh and did not depict a protest at the chief minister’s residence. It identifies the people shown as Hindu Jagran Manch activists and the location as Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh: police used a lathi-charge after activists locked the gate of the Senior Superintendent of Police’s office. To investigate the footage, the review reports that it searched screenshots from the video using Google Reverse Image Search and found a similar video uploaded to YouTube under a title identifying Hindu Jagran Manch workers and Aligarh. It then searched for news coverage using keywords about the Aligarh incident. The review quotes a Times of India account saying police used a lathi-charge to disperse the activists after they forcibly locked the SSP office gate while demanding an arrest. This evidence places the footage in a different event and setting from the one asserted in the claim.

NewtralCrime & justice

Agentes de la Policía rusa pegando “a tres moros”

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim presents a circulated video as showing Russian police officers beating three Muslim men. Newtral’s investigation says the footage was instead recorded in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, at a bar called Bossfor. It reports identifying the venue by comparing the location in the video with photographs of the restaurant, and says the people attacking the customers were employees of the private security company Elecor Ky3et—not police officers.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Missing child video by Nagpur Police.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a social-media video presented as showing Nagpur Police finding a missing child who speaks only Tamil. FACTLY’s review says the officer in the video directs the child’s relatives to collect her from Khawaja Ajmer Nagri police station, rather than identifying a Nagpur station. The review reports that searching for that station name placed it in Karachi, Pakistan. (S1: “The policeman belongs to Pakistan’s Sindh Police. The missing child in the video is with Khawaja Ajmer Nagri Police, not Nagpur Police.”; “So, when searched for ‘Khawaja Ajmer Nagri’ on Google, it was found that it is in Karachi (Pakistan).”) The review also says the officer’s uniform matches that of Sindh Police. Taken together, the stated location and uniform evidence support its conclusion that the video shows a case in Pakistan, not a missing-child case handled by Nagpur Police. The review describes the footage as being falsely shared with the Nagpur claim. (S1: “The uniform of the policeman in the video also matches with the uniform of Sindh Police.”; “To sum it up, a child-missing case from Pakistan is being falsely shared as a missing case in Nagpur.”)

NewtralCrime & justice

Decomisado en Francia cajas de oro del Amazonas de Venezuela

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim attached to the circulating video said that boxes of gold from Venezuela’s Amazon region had been seized in France, allegedly involving mining controlled by Nicolás Maduro’s son. The investigation describes footage of people opening boxes of gold bars, but says that the video’s setting and the gold’s alleged Venezuelan origin are separate questions: “Nada indica que el oro sea de Venezuela y el vídeo fue grabado en Ghana.” To locate the footage, the review used reverse-image searching and found versions circulated with captions placing the scene in different African countries and attributing the gold to Mali. It also examined visual clues in the video: a newspaper identified as Ghana’s B&FT and a paper marked “FarTrade.” The review reports that the newspaper is distributed mainly in Ghana and that the visible article was dated 10 June 2019; this helped place the recording in Ghana, not France. The article cautions that the newspaper date does not establish the exact recording date. The review also reports statements from people connected to the scene. Far Trade told the French fact-checking outlet Checknews that the footage showed a metals check in Accra, and attorney René Verrecchia told France 24 that he and another Italian had been hired to represent potential buyers during a metals sale. He described the viral interpretation as a distortion of an ordinary inspection. The review did not establish where the bars originated or independently confirm that the scene was an inspection; its conclusion was narrower: the footage was recorded in Ghana, and it provides no indication that the gold was Venezuelan.

NewtralCrime & justice

El comunicado que asegura que Urdangarín no está en la cárcel

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned a purported statement by prison employee Mario López Fernández saying that Iñaki Urdangarín had not entered Brieva prison, despite serving a sentence there. The review says the statement had circulated on social media for about a year and described López as having worked at the prison for three weeks. It identified Brieva, in Ávila, as the prison where Urdangarín had been serving his sentence since 18 June 2018. The review’s central check was whether the named author was actually a prison employee. Newtral reports that it contacted Spain’s prison administration, Instituciones Penitenciarias. According to the review, the agency said López Fernández had never worked at Brieva or at any other prison: it had no employee or worker by that name. The article adds that the real López had applied to join the prison service but did not make it in, and says this was documented in the official state gazette (BOE). It concludes that the creator of the false statement used López’s personal details to make the claim seem credible. The review also identifies Rubén López García as the purported legal representative named in the statement and says the Twitter account shown in the letter was associated with him. It describes other false claims attributed to that user, but those accounts are presented as background; the decisive evidence for this claim is the prison administration’s reported confirmation that the supposed author was not an employee, alongside the BOE information about his unsuccessful application.

NewtralCrime & justice

Un bebe ha sido robado de las manos de su madre en Melilla

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned a Facebook post alleging that a baby had been “robbed from his mother” in Melilla and that the mother was searching for him. Newtral reports that it contacted both the National Police and the Civil Guard; both denied that a child had been kidnapped in the border city. That directly contradicts the post’s central allegation of a kidnapping there. The review also notes that the circulated image had previously appeared in several Latin American countries, where it was identified as fake. The excerpt does not specify the image’s origin or describe further verification of it, so it supports the reported prior circulation and debunking, but not a more detailed account of the image’s provenance.

NewtralCrime & justice

Una niña con una camiseta amarilla desaparecida en los salesianos a la salida del cole

Publisher’s rating: Falso

Newtral examined social-media posts showing a girl in a yellow shirt and claiming she had disappeared “at the Salesianos after school.” The posts had circulated widely, but did not consistently identify one location: the article says versions named Bilbao, Valencia, Valdepeñas, Córdoba, Zaragoza and Antequera. That changing list is relevant context for the claim, which presents the disappearance as a single event at a particular school setting. The article reports that local police in Puertollano said the girl had been found in good condition after leaving San Juan Bosco school alone. Its account therefore describes a child who was located safely after going off by herself, not an ongoing disappearance as the circulating posts suggested. The report also says police in other cities, including Elche, warned that the posts were a hoax. Newtral’s conclusion is supported by the distinction between the reported incident in Puertollano and the multiple city-specific versions being shared online.

FACTLYCrime & justice

CISF Police personnel recovering cash from the Deputy Director of RBI.

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The post identified in the review said that CISF personnel caught the Deputy Director of an RBI currency-printing unit stealing cash in his shoes and that ₹10,000 crore was recovered from his home. The review’s account of the video identifies the person differently: it says the footage shows CISF personnel recovering cash from a Deputy Control Officer at Bank Note Press (BNP) in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh—not an RBI Deputy Director. The review also states that it found no position with the designation “Deputy Director of RBI.” To investigate the footage, the review searched Google using the terms “currency notes recovered CISF police.” It reports that an Outlook article contained one complete video incorporating three of the four clips in the post. That reporting described a Deputy Control Officer in BNP Dewas’s Notes Verification Section who was arrested after trying to take currency notes out in his sneakers. The review says he had been doing so over a period of time and had accumulated more than Rs 90 lakh. It dates the incident to January 2018. The review says an India Today report also identified the person caught by CISF as a Deputy Control Officer at BNP Dewas. It further explains that BNP Dewas is a unit of the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Limited, not an RBI unit. The review could not establish whether the post’s fourth clip was related to this incident. Thus, the evidence described supports the identification of the person and workplace in the three matching clips, but does not establish that every clip in the post depicts the same incident or support the post’s RBI designation and ₹10,000-crore account.

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: Police arrested the criminals in Trichy Lalitha Jewellery Robbery case

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review investigated a social-media post claiming Tamil Nadu police had caught the people who robbed Lalitha Jewellery in Trichy within 24 hours. It describes the robbery as a break-in at the shop near Chathiram bus stand on the night of October 2: masked people entered through a hole made in the rear wall and stole gold jewellery worth several crores. The post was shared on October 3 and praised police for catching the robbers. The review says Trichy police were still searching for the suspects. To check the arrest claim, the publisher says it contacted the Trichy City Police Commissioner’s office. Officials said investigators were actively searching and nearing the suspects, but did not announce that the robbers had been arrested. The review also examined reports about five people taken for questioning at a private lodging in Pudukkottai. It says police released them after finding they were sheet sellers with no connection to the jewellery robbery. A separate report said a person was arrested in Thiruvarur with five kilograms of gold; the review notes that whether this jewellery came from Lalitha Jewellery was still being investigated. The review cites a Vikatan report from the morning of October 4, which said police were nearing the suspects after 48 hours and connected a person caught in Thiruvarur to the Trichy robbery. But it also says only one person had been caught, not all the perpetrators, and that not all the stolen jewellery had been recovered. The review’s conclusion is that reports about people being questioned or one person being caught were misleadingly turned into a claim that all the robbers had been caught within 24 hours.