Old video of child’s murder from Thailand construed as Indian, shared on Facebook

A disturbing video of a man hanging himself and a kid to a pole has been circulating on Facebook over the past few days. In the video, a man and a toddler are seen seated on a concrete surface with a pole lowering down the edge. Further on, the man can be seen lowering the child on to the pole, and lowering himself off the ledge with the noose tied to their necks. While the man is later seen climbing back alive to the surface, the child seems to be dead.

A Facebook account named Paris wale ਪੈਰਿਸ ਵਾਲੇ (Paris Wale Parisians) has shared a video as described above with a caption, “इस वीडीओ को पूरे हिन्दूसतान और दुनिया के कोने कोने तक किसी भी जरीये से पहुचाने मे अपना हक अदा करें।। मैंने कर दिया। और आप सोच भी नही सकते जी के आप कितना बड़ा काम कर रहे हो।. Ohnu kasam lage jehra e video share na kare ehno sale no saja milni chahe di ve.” (Make your contribution in spreading this video to every corner of India and world by any means possible. I did. You can’t even imagine what a great thing you are doing. Those who don’t share the video will meet their punishment. -translated) At the time of writing, it had been viewed more than 2,38,000 times from this page which has less than 2400 followers.

One more Facebook Page, Tu NaHii To TeRii YaaD SaHiii has also shared the same video which has more than 51,000 views, with a similar caption. The captions accompanying the video in both these pages lack the basic context and location, which has misled users to infer that the video is from India. A comment below the video claims to have informed Delhi cyber cell via email.

What is the truth?

Alt News did a Google reverse image search of the keyframes in the video using Invid and found an article published by a website on April 25, 2017, titled, “Ahorcó a su bebé de 11 meses y se suicidó durante una transmisión de Facebook Live” (He hanged his 11-month-old baby and committed suicide during a Facebook Live broadcast -Google translated).

The article stated, “La Policía de Phuket dijo que Wuttisan Wongtalay, de 20 años, filmó en dos videos que colgó en Facebook la muerte de su hija ahorcándola desde la azotea de un hotel para luego hacer lo mismo.” (Phuket Police said Wuttisan Wongtalay, 20, filmed in two videos that posted on Facebook the death of his daughter by hanging her from the roof of a hotel and then do the same -Google translated)

Moreover, an article from The Washington Post published on April 25, 2017, stated “Wuttisan Wongtalay whose age has been reported as either 20 or 21, killed his daughter and himself at an abandoned hotel in Phuket, a Thai island in the Andaman Sea. The video clip showed the father tie a noose around his daughter’s neck and drop her from a rooftop.”

It is thus clear that the video is not from India but from Thailand, although it has been viewed and shared in large numbers by Indians. It has often been observed that social media users display a proclivity for sharing such videos which have graphic content without due verification.