Fact Check: Viral video of woman being tortured in Pakistan shared with communal spin

Hyderabad: A video (disturbing content: viewer discretion advised) of a woman being brutally dragged and beaten on the road in broad daylight is being widely shared on social media with the claim that the video is from Pakistan and the woman, being a Hindu, was attacked for her religion.

An X user shared the video with the caption, “The condition of #Hindu women in #Pakistan is worsening. It’s hypocritical for some US Muslims to criticize minority rights in #India while ignoring these issues. Pakistan should be held responsible for these actions. #Pakistan #hypocrisy #IsrealUnderAttack #HamasTerrorrists. (sic)” Click here to view another post with the same claim.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false.

We started our investigation by performing a reverse image search using the keyframes from the viral video and found a report on Dawn dated January 10, 2022, where the woman in the video was identified as a Muslim. Both victim and assaulter were found to be from the same community. There is no mention of a communal angle in the police account. The dispute behind the woman’s attack was quoted as an issue over land ownership.

Taking to Facebook on January 9, the Sialkot police also posted an image of the accused behind bars post-arrest.

In the caption they stated, “Sialkot police arrested four more accused involved in blatant violence on Muamar woman. The accused who threw sticks at the woman and threw stones also arrested. DPO Umar Saeed Malik has issued orders to continue the search operation until the arrest of all the accused involved in the case. All the suspects involved in the shameful incident will be punished and the victim woman will be given justice.”

Moreover, we found the same video uploaded on YouTube on a Pakistani news channel Capital TV. The video was uploaded with the title ‘Extreme brutality in Sialkot, public brutal torture on an elderly woman’ dated January 9.

The caption reads, “Extreme brutality in Sialkot, public brutal torture on an elderly woman. An elderly woman was brutally tortured in a land dispute in Sialkot. The video of the tragic incident has gone viral. In the viral video, a heartless man can be seen torturing an elderly woman in public and grabbing her by the hair and dragging her into the streets.”

The same video was covered by multiple Pakistan news handles such as ARY News, also based in Pakistan.

Moving forward, with the help of a keyword search, we found a media report from Geo News carrying the same video on January 9.

The report states, “Talking to Geo News, the elderly woman said the incident arose due to a ‘land dispute’ that she has had for the last 13 years. The culprits ‘banged my house door, forced their way in and dragged me through the streets to the public square where they tortured me’, the woman said.”

Hence, the claim that the woman in the video is a Hindu being attacked due to her religion in Pakistan is false.