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| - Fact Check: Wrong girl goes viral on social media as Hathras victim
While social media is outraged, and netizens are seeking justice for the 19-year-old gangrape victim from Hathras who died on Monday at a hospital in Delhi, a picture of a young girl is also going viral with the claim that this was the Hathras victim.
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India Today Fact Check
The victim's family has confirmed that the girl in the viral picture is not known to them.
On September 29, a 19-year-old girl from Hathras in Uttar Pradesh died in Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, two weeks after being allegedly gangraped and tortured. The brutal assault was reportedly carried out by four men on September 14 when the girl went to collect animal fodder from the fields.
Social media is outraged, and netizens are seeking justice for the victim and strict punishment for the guilty. A picture of a young girl is also going viral with the claim that this was the Hathras victim.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the viral picture is of some other girl not related to the incident at all.
Among others, motivational speaker and YouTuber Geet tweeted the picture and wrote, "My heart breaks just thinking about what this beautiful innocent girl must have endured (gang raped, tongue cut off, neck & spinal cord broken). No one should face such torture. Enough is enough! Things needs to change..now!"
The archived version of the post can be seen here.
Another Twitter user, Anu Tomar, wrote, "A 19-year-old girl was brutally gang-raped like Nirbhaya in UP Hathras by 4 Rapists. Her tongue was cut off. Her spinal cord and neck were damaged. Please, hangout all rapists."
News websites such as "Janbharat Times", "Telugu Circles", "Bharat Headlines" and "Publicist Recorder" have used the same viral picture in their reports on the Hathras incident. The archived versions of the reports can be seen here, here, here and here.
AFWA probe
We contacted the family of the Hathras victim and sent them the viral picture. The girl's brother replied that the picture is not of his sister. Other family members also confirmed that the girl seen standing in a sugarcane field in the picture is not known to them.
India Today's Hathras correspondent Rajesh Singhal sent us a video clip of the victim in which she is narrating the incident. He also sent us some of her pictures before and after the incident.
On comparing the original pictures of the Hathras victim to the girl in the viral picture, we found they are completely different. We have blurred the faces so that their identity is not revealed.
The girl whose picture is being shared as the Hathras victim is Manisha Yadav. She had died on July 22, 2018, while being treated at a Chandigarh hospital. She was from Ayodhya district of Uttar Pradesh, and as per her brother Ajay, the viral picture was taken at their native village.
Ajay told AFWA that his sister was married in Chandigarh and she’d lost her life due to negligence during treatment. The family wanted to file a complaint against the hospital but police were not registering an FIR. Due to this, Ajay and his friends had run the “Justice for Manisha” campaign on social media.
Update: After India Today published the story about wrong picture of Hathras victim being shared on social media, the brother of Manisha Yadav contacted us and narrated the story behind the viral picture. This information has been updated in the story.
(With inputs from Anil Kumar in Delhi)
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