Photographs of the dead body of a girl hanging from a tree have been shared on social media with the claim that Naseer Khan raped and murdered the girl in Rajasthan’s Sapotara. It’s being said that she was 8 years old. Below is a tweet by @Real_AbhiShukla where the claim has been made in Hindi — “8 वर्षीय बच्ची , सपोटरा , राजस्थान में # नसीर खान ने # बलात्कार के बाद # हत्या कर शव पेड़ से लटका दिया गया।”
The images are circulating across Facebook and Twitter. Alt News has also received fact-check requests on its official mobile application.
Fact-check
A reverse-image search of the photographs took us to a report by The Lallantop published on June 22, 2019. According to the report, a 19-year-old girl was murdered in Rajasthan’s Karauli district. On June 20, she had left her home for defecation and was later found hanging from a tree in another village. The doctor who conducted her post-mortem ruled out rape.
As per a report published by Dainik Bhaskar on June 22, the girl died after her throat was strangulated. The PM report did not hint at rape. The report said, “Initial police investigation speculated a lovers’ spat as the motive behind the crime. The police found the footprints of a person on a far below a field where the deceased’s slippers were also found at a distance of 100 feet from the scene of the crime. On the other side, the shoe prints of the pressure applied to kill the girl were found.
A follow-up report published by Dainik Bhaskar on June 26 said that the police arrested Mahendra Mina and the motive behind the murder was a lovers’ spat. Mina killed the girl to get rid of her and later tied her dead body from a tree.
Photographs of a year-old incident were shared on social media with the false claim that a Muslim man named Naseer Khan raped and murdered an 8-year-old girl in Rajasthan. The police had arrested Mahendra Mina in connection with the crime. Furthermore, the girl was not a minor but 19 years old.
Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.