A set of photographs, showing fake, prosthetic fingers of different sizes is being shared on social media, amid the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
What is the claim?: The photos are being with text in English, which says, "To give duplicate votes natural looking finger covers are being made for distribution in West Bengal. How far can they go to dupe the system?"
An archived version of this post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)
But...?: The photos have been on the internet since 2013 and have no connection to the Lok Sabha polls.
They show prosthetic fingers made for former gang members in Japan, who have missing fingers due to their previous profession.
How did we find out?: We cropped the photograph to isolate each one, and ran a reverse image search on both of them on several search engines.
On Yandex, the second photograph returned a result which showed an ABC News report about prosthetics helping feared gangsters in Japan.
It carried a video which showed the same visuals seen in the claim.
The screenshots in the claim were taken from the video report.
(Source: ABC News/Screenshot)
The report carried details about one Shintaro Hayashi's work as a prosthetics maker in Tokyo, Japan, whose career involved making silicone body parts for people with cancer or those with serious injuries.
It added that Hayashi found unexpected clientele in yakuza members, who are feared gangsters in Japan, who came in to get prosthetic fingers to replace the parts that had been chopped off as punishment.
Using the article's headline as a search term, we also came across a video by AFP, which showed more visuals from Hayashi's life.
The Quint had previously debunked the same claim in 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls that year.
Conclusion: A video showing prosthetic fingers for former Japanese gang members has gone viral with a false claim about voter fraud in West Bengal.
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