Rampant sharing of unrelated, old, and scripted videos about ‘child lifting‘ on social media has led to widespread violence in several parts of the country.
While the police have been issuing advisories and warning people against mob attacks, another video that shows two men kidnapping a schoolgirl from a bus stand is being shared to claim that the incident is real.
However, we found that the video is scripted and shows the kidnappers getting caught by two people who were following them in a car. While one of them is recording the incident, the other person can be seen beating the kidnappers.
We were able to identify one of the people in the video as Naveen Jangra, a YouTuber, who confirmed to us that this video is "scripted."
We came across several similar videos on his channel, which were uploaded with disclaimers mentioning that they were made for "entertainment purposes only."
CLAIM
The claim suggests that the video shows a real incident of two men kidnapping a schoolgirl from a bus stand. The video was uploaded with a caption that said, "Live kidnapped a schoolgirl on the bus stand."
An archive of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
Archives of similar claims can be found here.
WHAT WE FOUND
At first, we noticed that the person recording the video said "Naveen" while asking him to bring water for the schoolgirl.
We then came across a tweet thread claiming the incident to be real, where a comment from a user mentioned that the people seen in the video are pranksters, Naveen Jhangra and Sonu Choudhary.
The comment mentions the names of the people seen in the video.
(Source: Screenshot/Twitter/Altered by The Quint)
Taking this as a cue, we searched for Naveen Jhangra and came across his verified YouTube channel. While we could not find the viral video on his channel, we found that he regularly uploads such videos.
This led us to a different video in which Jhangra can be seen wearing the same t-shirt as the person in the viral clip.
A comparison between both the images shows some similarities.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
On comparing other frames from this video to the viral one, we found some more similarities.
The backside of the t-shirt looks the same in both images.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
Some of the videos uploaded on his channel also have disclaimers, which state that they are for "entertainment purposes only."
Some videos also have disclaimers.
(Source: YouTube/Screenshot)
Further, we reached out to Jangra, who told The Quint that the video was scripted and not a real incident, as claimed in the viral post.
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