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| - Fact Check: No, this Hindu man did not kill his Muslim wife - photo of grisly suitcase corpse is not her
The couple told India Today that their photos from Instagram and Facebook were misused by others.
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India Today Fact Check
The man and the woman in the photos are an interfaith couple from UP. Both are alive and well. The suitcase photo is from a 2022 Gurugram crime.
A disturbing set of photos being shared online allegedly shows how a young woman who married outside her faith was killed by her husband, stuffed inside a suitcase, and discarded. “The boy for whom she left her parents, left her religion, left her relatives, after fulfilling his lust, cut her and stuffed her in a suitcase,” read a tweet containing these photos.
The insinuation here was that of the “Bhagwa Love Trap”, a conspiracy theory like “Love Jihad”, which purports that Hindu men seduce and entrap Muslim women to convert them to Hinduism. The archived version of the tweet can be seen here.
India Today’s investigation found that the couple in the photo is from Uttar Pradesh and the woman was alive. The photo of the dead body in the suitcase is from Gurugram, Haryana.
Our Probe
A reverse search of the photo of the dead body stuffed in a suitcase led us to several news reports from 2022. According to a news report from October 19, 2022, the suitcase was discovered in Gurugram. A man called Rahul Kushwaha, per the report, confessed to the police that he killed his wife Priyanka.
Per the police, Rahul said that Priyanka would demand expensive appliances, which led to frequent fights. On the night of October 16, 2022, Priyanka allegedly slapped Rahul, which enraged him and he strangulated her. The following morning, Rahul allegedly bought a suitcase and stuffed her wife’s naked body into it after peeling off the skin from her hand which had her name tattooed.
India Today had earlier fact-checked posts claiming that the woman in the suitcase was a victim of “Love Jihad”.
Other news reports related to this case contained no mention of the couple being interfaith or the woman having converted from Islam. So, we reversed-searched the photos of the couple. This led us to the Instagram account of the man in the photos.
Through Instagram, India Today was able to reach both Ravi Shrivastav and his wife Avni, the two people in the photos. India Today spoke to both via video call to confirm their identities.
Ravi, a resident of Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, told India Today, “I am Hindu and [Avni] was Muslim. We married under the Special Marriage Act on May 8, 2023. She converted to Hinduism willingly after our marriage. I never forced her to convert. That's why we had a court marriage in Dehradun.”
He said that he had shared their photos on Instagram and Facebook and people misused them to spread vicious rumours. “Because of all the fake claims, I removed all of her photos from social media. We love each other irrespective of all the barriers. Let us live," said Ravi.
Avni told India Today that she had converted to Hinduism of her own volition. “We fell in love and married according to the law. My name used to be Afreen, but it is now Avni. There is no disagreement between us. We have a happy marriage,” she said.
Thus, it’s clear that photos of an interfaith couple were shared on social media with misleading claims.
(With inputs from Vikas Bhadauria)
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