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| - Fact Check: Video of exorcism passed off as forced conversion of Hindu girl in Pakistan
A video of an exorcism was passed off as forced conversion of a Hindu girl in Pakistan.
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India Today Fact Check
While incidents of forced conversion have been reported in Pakistan, this video does not show that. It shows an act of exorcism. The man seen torturing the girl is Haji Muhammad Ullah, a self-proclaimed exorcist from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan.
Atrocities on minorities in Pakistan, particularly forced conversions of Hindu minor girls, have been reported widely inside and outside Pakistan.
Recently, a video of a girl being tortured by two men went viral with the claim that this was a Hindu girl being electrocuted to forcibly convert her to Islam.
Several Twitter and Facebook users shared the viral video with claims like, “Viral Video from Pakistan: How Muslims torture Hindu girls by giving electric shocks to forcibly convert them to Islam. This video is from KPK, Pakistan”.
The India Today Anti-Fake News War room (AFWA) found that this video does not show the forced conversion of a Hindu girl. It shows an exorcism ritual. The man seen torturing the girl is Haji Muhammad Ullah, a self-proclaimed exorcist from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan.
AFWA probe
We found this video was also shared on Reddit, where several people claimed it did not capture forced conversion, rather it showed exorcism.
One Reddit user referred to the conversation in the viral video, which is in mixed Pashto language, and commented that the people in the video were talking about demons. Another Reddit user claimed the man in the video was a known Pakistani exorcist called Haji Muhammad Ullah.
Taking this as a clue, we looked up Haji Muhammad Ullah on social media. A self-proclaimed exorcist of Achini Meira area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, this man has a YouTube channel with over 80,000 subscribers.
He also has a Facebook page with over 11 lakh followers and an Instagram account.
His YouTube and Facebook pages are full of similar videos that show him supposedly treating people with “mystical powers”. He claimed to have special powers to cure people who were ill and possessed by “evil spirits”.
We could not find the exact viral video in any of his social media accounts. But comparing other similar videos of exorcism from his YouTube channel with the viral one, we are confirmed that it was the same room with the same carpet and wall paint.
We tried to decipher the conversation in the viral video with the help of the Azure video analyzer for media, but the results didn’t yield much.
We then sought the help of Ahmad Sahel Arman, an Afghani journalist from Kabul who is versed in the Pashto language. As per Arman, the language in the video was mixed Pakistani-Pashto. The girl in the video claimed she was possessed by spirits. The man then tried to cure her allegedly using mystical powers. Subsequently, the girl chanted Allah’s name.
We tried to contact the Haji Muhammad Ullah over the phone in Pakistan, but he was unreachable. We will update the story accordingly if he responds.
We can, however, conclude that the viral video has nothing to do with conversion. It is an exorcism ritual captured on video.
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