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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

Policeman being attacked by a mob for issuing a challan.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a circulating video that was said to show a policeman being attacked by a mob for issuing a challan. Its account identifies the footage instead with an incident in Dabholi, Surat: a police raid on a gambling den was followed by the death of a Dalit youth under what the review describes as mysterious circumstances. The review says locals then attacked the sub-inspector, accusing him of thrashing the youth. To trace the footage, the review reports searching Google for “Police beaten by mob” and finding an AajTak news video containing the same clip, uploaded on July 25, 2016. It says that video connected the attack to the death during the raid in Dabholi. The review also points to a Firstpost article reporting the incident as corroboration of that account. On the evidence described in the review, the video depicts a response to the youth’s death and allegations about police conduct—not an attack prompted by the issuing of a challan. The excerpt does not provide further details about the raid or the circumstances of the youth’s death, so those cannot be established from this evidence.

NewtralCrime & justice

Samar Badawi y Israa al-Ghomgham, activistas pro derechos humanos, han sido decapitadas en Arabia Saudí

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim says that Saudi human-rights activists Samar Badawi and Israa al-Ghomgham had been beheaded in Saudi Arabia. Newtral’s review says that recurring messages and images had claimed the women were executed, but reports that both were still imprisoned. It attributes confirmation of their continued imprisonment to Adam Coogle, a Human Rights Watch researcher, and says Amnesty International also told Newtral it had no information that al-Ghomgham had been executed. The review distinguishes their legal situations. For al-Ghomgham, prosecutors had initially sought the death penalty over her participation in protests in Qatif, but withdrew that request in January 2019. Amnesty International told Newtral she no longer faced a death sentence, although she still faced imprisonment. For Badawi, the review reports that she had not been executed and did not face the death penalty; the charges described against her related to her human-rights work, including advocating women’s rights and ending male guardianship. The evidence presented therefore contradicts the execution claim: the sources Newtral cites said the women remained in prison, and the review reports that neither faced execution at the time. It also supplies important context that the original death-penalty request concerning al-Ghomgham had been withdrawn, while Badawi’s case did not involve a death sentence.

NewtralCrime & justice

Detenidas dos personas que pusieron el himno de España durante un acto de Quim Torra por la Diada

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned two people who played Spain’s national anthem during a Diada event attended by Catalan president Quim Torra, and alleged that they were arrested. Newtral reports that it contacted the Mossos d’Esquadra, who denied that any arrest had taken place. The police account was that the two people were identified, not detained. The review places the incident at the Generalitat’s floral offering to the monument to Rafael Casanova in Barcelona, on the morning of Wednesday, September 11, 2019. While the Catalan anthem was playing, the two people broadcast Spain’s anthem from a nearby balcony. Mossos said they identified them for disrupting an authorized event and to prevent further incidents. Thus, the report distinguishes identification for the disruption from the claimed arrest.

FACTLYCrime & justice

11 Indian Nuclear Scientists were mysteriously killed between 2009-2013, during the UPA government.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a social-media post alleging that 11 Indian nuclear scientists were mysteriously killed between 2009 and 2013, during the UPA government. Its review says it searched for information about the deaths and found that newspaper reports in 2015 had described them as “mysterious,” drawing on Department of Atomic Energy data that 11 scientists had died unnaturally during 2009–13. That figure does not by itself establish that the deaths were killings or that they were mysterious. The decisive evidence described in the review is a Lok Sabha question and answer on the Department of Atomic Energy website. FACTLY reports that, in December 2015, Minister of State Dr. Jitendra Singh said the 11 unnatural deaths comprised nine scientists and two research fellows, and that police investigated every case; none was categorized as mysterious. The response also included an annexure listing reasons for each death. This official account addresses the post’s central implication of unexplained, suspicious deaths, while distinguishing unnatural deaths from proven killings. The review’s method, as described in its excerpt, was to search for reporting on the deaths and locate the parliamentary question-and-answer record and its annexure. The excerpt does not provide the individual causes of death, so it cannot support a case-by-case account here. It does, however, report that the government’s answer explicitly rejected the “mysterious” characterization and supplied reasons for the deaths.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Policemen fighting with one another over the distribution of money collected through traffic challans.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video showing two men in khaki uniforms fighting, which was circulated as footage of policemen arguing over how to divide money collected through traffic challans. FACTLY identifies the men instead as a Prantiya Raksha Dal (PRD) jawan and a home guard, and locates the altercation at Mandi Chowki, under Baraut police station in Uttar Pradesh. The review says the dispute arose over a car-related issue, not challan money. FACTLY describes its video-checking process: it ran the post’s video through the InVid plugin to obtain keyframes, then reverse-searched those images. A keyframe led to an ANI News tweet identifying a fight between a PRD jawan and a home guard at Mandi Chowki. FACTLY also reports finding an ANI article about the incident; the supplied excerpt does not provide that article’s date. The account attributed to Circle Officer Baraut RK Kushwaha supplies the stated cause. He said the RTO had seized a car that was released the previous day; the car had been under the home guard’s observation, and the PRD jawan stopped it at the mandi gate, “because of which a fight broke out between them.” That account supports the review’s distinction between the actual dispute described in the reporting and the claim attached to the video.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Men beaten by the Police personnel for not wearing a helmet.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of police beating men, said to show punishment for not wearing helmets. FACTLY’s review identifies the footage instead as a police lathi-charge connected to student-union election protests at Raj Rishi College in Alwar, Rajasthan. It reports that students had alleged election rigging and were on their way to meet the Collector to raise concerns about the campus elections when police beat them. The review describes how it traced the clip: FACTLY ran the posted video through the InVid plugin to obtain keyframes, then searched those frames using Yandex. A match led to the same video on YouTube, uploaded on August 28, 2019. The video description linked it to an election-related issue at Raj Rishi College in Alwar; the review then found an Aaj Tak news video reporting on the incident. The review’s account of the news report says police beat the protesting students as they went to meet the Collector, and that retired army man Amarchand Meena was also injured in the lathi-charge. This identifies a specific, unrelated-to-helmet-enforcement reason for the police action shown. On the evidence it describes, the video does not establish that the men were beaten for failing to wear helmets; FACTLY rates that claim FALSE.

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: RSS man raped a 13 year old girl in Kerala

Publisher’s rating: Fact Crescendo Rating: False

The claim concerned a social-media post and video alleging that a man had raped his friend’s 13-year-old daughter in Kerala and presenting him as a BJP/RSS member. Fact Crescendo traced the video to a Facebook post published on September 6, 2019, and matched its details to a 2017 case in Vadakara. The review says the video showed police bringing a man into a station, but its Malayalam speech was not understandable to the reviewer. Its account of the matching case identifies the accused as Thilakan and says the case concerned his friend’s 13-year-old daughter. To check the political-affiliation part of the claim, the review says its Malayalam fact-checking team contacted Vadakara police officer Shainu. According to the review’s account of that conversation, the case was registered on July 10, 2017, as case 1013/2017, and police had not investigated the accused’s political background because it was a criminal case. The review also reports speaking with Vadakara panchayat BJP official Shyam, who said Thilakan had joined the RSS in 1998, was removed in 1999, and had no connection with the organization when the incident occurred. The review therefore distinguishes the reported sexual-assault case from the post’s assertion that the accused was an RSS member at the time. It also says a Malayalam Manorama television report described an elderly man’s arrest in a rape case without identifying him as an RSS figure. The review’s conclusion is that the claim linking the accused to the RSS at the time was false; it does not dispute that a case concerning the assault allegation was registered.