(This story was first published on 17 December 2018, and has been republished from The Quint’s archives in light of the fake message resurfacing.)
CLAIM
A video circulating online claims that a Hindu girl was burnt alive in Madhya Pradesh by a mob "because she had attended a prayer meeting in a Christian church.”
The video being shared by Twitter users shows a girl, allegedly set ablaze, lying in the middle of a road as a crowd looks on.
The post has been retweeted more than four thousand times in 24 hours, and more than five thousand people have engaged with it on the social media platform.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The claim is false as the video circulating online is incomplete and has been edited to show the girl being burnt alive. The original video, published by Al Jazeera, shows a mob beating the girl before setting her on fire.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
According to CNN, the real incident dates back to May 2015, when a mob had beaten up a 16-year-old girl and burnt her alive for alleged involvement in the killing of a cab driver in Guatemala’s Rio Bravo.
After the edited video was shared online, internet users criticised the crowd for not trying to help the victim and called the incident “atrocious”. But a few others called it out as fake news after spotting that the clip was dated.
This is not the first time that a video has been shared in the wrong context. In March 2017, another video posted on Facebook and other social media websites had claimed that a young Marwari girl, who had married a Muslim man in Andhra Pradesh, had been thrashed and burnt alive by a mob for refusing to wear burqa.
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