An incident of the murder of a 21-year-old engineering student, Apoorva Shetty, in Karnataka's Mysuru is being widely shared not just on social media but also in news outlets with a communal claim that identifies her murderer as one 'Ashik.'
Photos of the two are being shared, referring to the incident as 'love jihad' – a term popularised by the right-wing – warning Hindu girls to stay away from boys belonging to the Muslim community.
However, the man has been misidentified. While the photos and the incident are accurate, the accused has been identified as one Ashish. Mysuru Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Pradeep Gunti and the girl's father, Ravish Shetty, confirmed to The Quint that there was no communal angle to the brutal murder.
CLAIM
The claim was shared by news organisation Asianet, right-wing media portal HinduPost, Sudarshan News journalist Sagar Kumar, and television debater Syed Rizwan Ahmed with a communal spin.
An archive of Asianet's article can be accessed here.
(Source: Asianet/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We saw that the news reports on the incident identifying the accused as 'Ashik', said that the murder had occurred in the jurisdiction of Devaraja police station in Karnataka's Mysuru.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for the First Information Report (FIR) in connection with the murder. The FIR was registered on 1 September and identified the accused as Ashish and not Ashik, as was claimed.
We came across contact details of the deceased's family members in the FIR.
Ravish Kumar HT, the deceased's father, told The Quint that Ashish was from the Hindu community.
"The boy belongs to the Vokkaliga community. We met him a few months ago when he pretended to be Apoorva's friend. We did not know anything about this incident until the police informed us about it."Ravish Kumar HT, Apoorva Shetty's father
He added that they expected the investigation to be completed soon, so that Apoorva gets justice.
Apoorva's family also added that the hotel room, where the body was found, had been reserved under Ashish's friend Nishant's name.
The Quint contacted Mysuru Deputy Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Pradeep Gunti to enquire about the incident, who categorically denied any communal angle to the incident.
The DCP confirmed that the photographs and the incident were accurate.
Evidently, the communal colour given to the incident is completely wrong. The accused was identifed as Ashish, not Ashik as was claimed, who belongs to the Hindu community. Mysuru DCP (Law and Order) Pradeep Gunti also denied any communal angle to the murder.
(With inputs from Siddharth Sarathe and Kritika Goel.)
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