| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Shocking suitcase murder in Uttarakhand given false communal twist on Twitter
A claim was made on social media that a Muslim man from Uttarakhand killed his Hindu girlfriend Kajal and stuffed her body in a suitcase to get rid of it. However, police confirmed that both, the accused, and the victim are Muslim.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
Piran Kaliyar police confirmed that both Gulzeb Hussain, the accused, and Ramsha, the victim whose body was found inside the suitcase, are Muslim.
In a bizarre and macabre incident, a man was caught at a hotel with the body of his partner stuffed in a suitcase in Piran Kaliyar of Uttarakhand's Haridwar district. Shocking photos and videos of the incident have been shared online. Some of these posts, however, come with a false claim.
Several people tweeted the video and photos of the accused man alleging the incident was an instance of “love jihad” — a right-wing Hindu conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men target Hindu women and convert them to Islam through marriage.
"After killing his girlfriend Kajal, a man from Jwalapur who was planning to dispose of the body in a suitcase at the Kaliyar Guest House, has been arrested. Love jihad and murder," the translation of one such tweet in Hindi read.
Similar claims have been archived here and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that the claim was misleading. Both the accused and the victim were Muslims.
AFWA Probe
Many of the tweets that alleged the incident to be an instance of interfaith love claimed the name of the victim was Kajal. We checked for recent crime reports from Uttarakhand where victims named Kajal were involved. However, there were none.
A Google keyword search in Hindi took us to a couple of reports published by the Dainik Jagran. The first report from March 24 said that the man was stopped by hotel staff while carrying the suitcase around 8 pm on March 24. The body of the woman was found inside when it was opened. This report established the identity of the accused as Jwalapur native Gulzeb and the victim as Ramsha — a distant relative of his.
While this report stated that Gulzeb told cops that Ramsha had consumed poison, Jagran in a follow-up article quoted Rural SP Parmendra Dobhal saying that the accused strangled Ramsha using a pillow. The duo was in a relationship for about eight years and the woman’s refusal to enter wedlock was said to be the motive behind the crime. This report can be read here.
We reached out to the local police to cross-check the facts. Dharmendra Rathi, the SO of Piran Kaliyar confirmed the identity of the accused. "The boy and the girl both are Muslim. The boy's name is Gulzeb Hussain while the girl is Ramsha, the daughter of Rashid."
Hence, it became clear the incident was falsely claimed to be “love jihad”.
(With inputs from Yash Mittal in New Delhi)
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)