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| - Fact Check: Video of Hindu man stabbing woman in West Bengal's Murshidabad shared with false 'love jihad' angle
A video showing a Hindu man stabbing a Hindu woman in Murshidabad, West Bengal, has been twisted into a false 'love jihad' narrative.
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India Today Fact Check
The “love jihad” spin is false. Both the assailant and the victim were Hindu. Sushant Chowdhury reportedly shot and stabbed Sutapa Chowdhury over infidelity.
A disturbing video of a man stabbing a woman lying on a street went viral on social media with claims that a Muslim man stabbed a Hindu woman because she refused to convert to Islam. The incident allegedly took place in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district.
In this video that contains graphic violence, a man in an orange t-shirt speaks loudly to people, presumably recording this video. He said in Bengali, "Where were you all when she backstabbed me?"
When someone asked him if that gave him the right to kill her, the man said, "Why wouldn’t I?"
At the end of the video, the man stabs the visibly unconscious woman a few times, as people recording the video sounded alarmed.
Many shared this with captions like, “Love Jihad case at Baharampur, Murshidabad. Hindu girl refuse [sic] to accept His religion of peace so he stabbed [sic] her in public. Welcome to Islamic State Of Bengal. Victim is the student of Murshidabad Bahrampur Krishnanath College. Sutapa Chowdhury, a third year student.”
Archived versions of similar posts can be seen here and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this claim to be misleading. Both the accused and the victim were Hindu.
AFWA Probe
A reverse search of keyframes of the video led us to a video report by ABP Ananda uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2022. According to the report, 21-year-old Sutapa Chowdhury was first shot and then stabbed to death in Murshidabad’s Berhampur on the evening of May 2.
The footage shown in the news report appeared to be from the same incident. We noted various visual similarities and found the same verbal exchanges. So, while we concluded this was the same incident, we found no mention of “love jihad” in the news report.
Further searches led us to an Ei Samay report from May 3 that said the main accused was a man called Sushant Chowdhury. According to that report, cops arrested Sushant Chowdhury within hours and he told the police during the investigation that the woman allegedly had been unfaithful to him several times. This reportedly was what led him to do this.
While talking to the press, the SP of Murshidabad, K Sabari Raj Kumar, also mentioned the same names of the victim and the prime accused but mentioned no religious angle.
We reached out to Kumar for more details and he told India Today that “both the boy and the girl were Hindu and this is not a case of love jihad in any way.”
Thus, we conclude that the video of the man stabbing a woman on the street was falsely given a “love jihad” spin despite the fact that both the victim and the accused were Hindu.
(With inputs from Gopal Thakur in Murshidabad)
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