Fact Check: Video of girl crying over demolished home is from Delhi, not Haryana

Hyderabad: A video of a girl talking about the demolition of her house has gone viral on social media. In the video, she is heard saying that, along with her house, her dream of becoming a doctor has been demolished too.

An X handle shared the video claiming that the poor girl belongs to the Muslim community and her house was demolished in Nuh, Haryana, as part of the recent spate of demolitions alleging targeting homes of Muslims.

“A poor #Muslim girl from #Nuh, #Haryana talking about his pain after her house demolished by authorities, (sic)” read the caption.

Following the recent communal clashes in Haryana, the state government launched a demolition drive of the houses of alleged perpetrators. On August 7, The Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered a stay on the demolition drive in Haryana’s Nuh district and questioned the state government if the move was an “exercise of ethnic cleansing”.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video shows the victim of a demolition drive that was carried out in June by the Delhi Urban Slum Improvement Board in Priyanka Gandhi camp near Vasant Kunj, Delhi. It is not linked to the events in Haryana’s Nuh.

On performing a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we came across a video report by The Lallantop from June 19, 2023. It showed the same girl and other women speaking to a reporter after their houses were demolished.

According to the video’s description, on the morning of June 16, makeshift homes of several families living in the Priyanka Gandhi camp near Vasant Kunj were demolished. The camp, which has been a shelter for over 500 people for almost a decade, has now been allocated to the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).

The Indian Express also reported on the demolition drive on June 17 in a report titled “Over 500 people affected after slum demolition near Vasant Kunj.” It said that the Delhi Urban Slum Improvement Board (DUSIB) carried out the demolition two weeks after the Delhi High Court refused to stay the demolition exercise.

Hindustan Times also reported about the demolition exercise on June 16 with the same details.

Hence, we conclude that the old video of a girl, narrating her pain of seeing her makeshift house being demolished in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj, has been falsely linked to the recent demolitions in Haryana’s Nuh.