Fact Check: Communal claim falsely links Muslim man from UP’s Deoria to marriage with daughter-in-law
Images of an elderly man with a young woman are circulating online, claiming that a Muslim man from UP’s Deoria married his daughter-in-law.
By Md Mahfooz Alam
Claim:The image shows a Muslim man from UP’s Deoria who married his daughter-in-law after the death of his son.
Fact:Misleading. The image has been circulating online since at least 2017 and shows Assam businessman Rajesh Himatsingka, then 70 years old, who remarried a younger woman years after his wife passed away.
Two photos showing an elderly man with a young woman are being widely shared on social media, with the claim that a Muslim man from Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, married his daughter-in-law just five days after the death of his son.
An X (formerly Twitter) handle named Voice of Hindus shared the images and wrote, “Unbelievable, but this is Mauzhub’s reality. In Deoria, UP, Mohammad Shakeel’s son passed away just 5 days ago. What happened next is nothing short of shocking. Instead of mourning his son’s death, Shakeel chose to ‘fill the emptiness’ by marrying his own daughter-in-law.” (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the viral claim is misleading and communal in nature. The man in the images is not from Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, and is not involved in any such marriage. The photos are unrelated and have been online for several years.
A reverse image search of the first photo led us to a video published by BB News on 12 November 2017. According to the report, the man in the photo is Rajesh Kumar Himatsingka, a 70-year-old businessman from Assam, who married a woman nearly half his age.
We also found the same photo featured in reports by Dainik Bhaskar and Divya Marathi from 2017. These reports confirm that Himatsingka had lost his wife years earlier and later remarried a younger woman.
The articles also state that Himatsingka was appointed Managing Director of Himatsingka Auto Enterprises Ltd. in 1987. The group operates in multiple sectors, including seeds, hospitality, and motor works, across Assam, West Bengal, and other regions.
A reverse image search of the second photo also led to a report by Patrika published on August 12, 2018. It again identifies the man as Rajesh Himatsingka and notes that his marriage to a woman 40–45 years younger received heavy criticism online.
Was a Muslim man from Deoria involved in such a case?
We found no credible reports of any man from Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, marrying his daughter-in-law. However, a different case was reported in June 2025 from Bansangali village in Rampur, UP. In that incident, a 55-year-old Muslim man named Shakeel allegedly eloped with and married his son’s 22-year-old fiancée. His son, who was a minor, had been engaged to the woman prior to this.
The man in that case, however, is not the one shown in the viral images. Photos published by NDTV, Times of India, and ABP clearly show a different individual and woman than the ones being circulated.
The viral images do not show a Muslim man from Deoria marrying his daughter-in-law. The photos have been online since at least 2017 and show Assam businessman Rajesh Kumar Himatsingka, who remarried years after the death of his wife. The claim is false, misleading, and communal in nature, and appears to be intended to target the Muslim community.
