Fact Check: Image of woman tying rakhi to Muslim man goes viral with false claim
A photo of a woman tying a rakhi around a Muslim man’s wrist is going viral on social media with the claim that the man raped the woman and filmed the incident.
By Tejal Sinha Published on 28 Aug 2021 4:30 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A photo of a woman tying a rakhi around a Muslim man's wrist is going viral on social media with the claim that the man raped the woman and filmed the incident.
The post claims that in Kashipur a woman, Poonam Sagar, used to tie rakhi to Arif Khan. However, Arif tarnished their relationship and raped Poonam.
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Fact Check
The claim is misleading.
First, NewsMeter tried to find out the identities of the man and woman in the viral photo. A reverse search revealed that the photo was taken from a video. This video was shared on Twitter a few days ago on the occasion of Rakshabandhan.
In the video, a board with the words "RAYYAN FABRICATORS" is visible. We searched for Rayyan Fabricators on Facebook which led us to the profile of Arun Kishore Dahiya where we found a few photos that also had the same board in the background.
We also found a post on the Facebook page in which many people were tagged one of whom was Mohammed Sadiq. He resembles the man in the viral post so we visited Sadiq's profile. We found that he had shared a post by Aaj Tak that had earlier debunked this viral claim.
In the post, Sadiq said the woman was Meenakshi and not Poonam and demanded action be taken against those responsible for defaming them.
According to the report by Aaj Tak, both Meenakshi and Mohammed Sadiq has refuted the viral claim.
Since an image of a newspaper clipping was also shared along with the viral photo, we performed a keyword search of the headline and found a report on the website sanchkitop.com published on 19 July 2021. According to the report, the woman told the police that her neighbor, who called her his sister, took her to a temple where he drugged her. When she regained consciousness, she was wearing a mangalsutra and the accused had raped her. The victim said the man had made a video and was threatening to make it viral.
It is evident that the claim made through the viral post is misleading. The photo of a woman tying rakhi to a Muslim man is being linked with a different incident.
