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Fact Check
Claim
Warning from Hyderabad DCP against a gang of criminals kidnapping women by drugging them under the pretext of selling perfume
Fact
No such advisory issued by the police, viral message found to be a recurring hoax
An advisory, purportedly from “KR Nagaraju, DCP (crime branch)” and addressed to all “Hyderabadis”, cautioning citizens against being persuaded by “perfume salesmen” who test their products in the parking lot of malls, is being widely shared. An elaborate scheme is afoot to kidnap or rob women by lacing perfume samples with drugs that cause one to pass out, the message claims. The note states that over seven girls have gone missing in similar incidents that happened across three malls in the city. We have received this “warning” on our WhatsApp tipline (9999499044), requesting it to be fact-checked.
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Newschecker analysed the viral police advisory, which was not written in formal language typical of government advisories and had multiple grammatical errors, raising our doubts on its authenticity.
Taking a cue, we ran a keyword search for “Hyderabad city perfume scam police advisory”, which did not throw up any credible news reports on any such instances of crime happening in the city nor an advisory on it.
We, however, came across this report by The NewsMinute, dated July 16, 2019, according to which, a message claiming that salespersons near shopping malls were handing out perfume samples laced with drugs, has been doing the rounds on WhatsApp in Telangana. “It’s a new scam, the paper is laced with drugs. U’ll pass out so they can kidnap, rob or do worse things to u. This happened in more than 3 well known malls (sic),” the message said, similar to the viral warning.
However, according to the report, the then viral message claimed “over 78 girls are missing in hyderabad alone and more than 540 ladies are missing past 10 days,” indicating that the new message followed the same template, but changed the figures.
The TNM report debunked the viral message, citing that the claim provided distorted data on missing women, triggering panic over women’s safety in public spaces.
Newschecker further looked up Hyderabad City Police’s website, where we did not see an officer named KR Nagaraju, belonging to the DCP rank. However, a relevant keyword search led us to the Telangana State Police Department’s official website, where we saw that Nagaraju is the Nizamabad CP.
We then ran a keyword search for “Nagaraju perfume scam advisory”, which led us to this Bangalore Mirror news report, dated July 3, 2019. We learnt that the viral advisory had been in circulation in 2019, and that Nagaraju, who was a DCP posted in Warangal, Andhra Pradesh, clarified to Bangalore Mirror that the message being circulated in his name was fake and that he had filed a complaint.
Alleged warning issued by Hyderabad DCP against a gang that kidnaps women by drugging them under the pretext of selling perfume was found to be fake.
Source
The NewsMinute report, July 16, 2019
Bangalore Mirror report, July 3, 2019
Telangana State Police Department website
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