Videos showing violence against woman take little time to be circulated with ‘love jihad’ claims in India. Two videos have recently been shared with similar communal overtones. In the first, a man is seen stabbing a woman in broad daylight as several bystanders watch. The other video was taken from a different angle and features the same incident.
Twitter user @mahadevyatibaba shared one of these clips, writing, “Forget Kashmir, now Delhi itself is becoming like Kashmir. Women protesting love jihad will be killed openly with knives. Bystanders continue going about their business and nobody saves her. This fear will truly bring about the ruin of Hindus in the coming days.”
[Note: Alt News will not be including the videos in this report due to their highly graphic and disturbing nature.]
[Viral Hindi text: “कश्मीर तो दूर की बात है अब दिल्ली का हाल भी कश्मीर जैसा होता जा रहा है लव जिहाद का विरोध करने वाली महिला की चाकुओं से गोदकर खुलेआम हत्या कर दी जाती है और वहां के लोग देखकर निकल जाते हैं कोई उसे बचाता नहीं यही डर हिंदुओं की बर्बादी का कारण बनेगा आज नहीं तो कल होगा लेकिन सत्य है.”]
Other users also circulated the visuals with this caption. The image was posted in the ‘We Support Pushpendra Kulshreshtha‘ Facebook group, which has more than 3.6 lakh members.
Similarly, several others shared the communal post (first, second, third and fourth).
Pictures of the dead woman have also been shared with the same claim.
False claim
We performed keyword searching using the phrase ‘man stabbing woman’ and found various reports covering the video. On April 10, India Today reported that a man named Harish Mehta attacked and killed his wife using a knife in Delhi’s Rohini area. He suspected his wife of having an ‘illegitimate relationship’. The deceased Neelu Mehta used to work at Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi. Harish stabbed his wife in front of a number of bystanders, many of whom were recording footage instead of saving her.
Dozens of media outlets including The Indian Express, The Hindu, and NDTV covered the incident. The Indian Express reported, “Neelu was rushed to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital but doctors declared her dead on arrival. The accused, who works at a marriage bureau, told police he recently got married to Neelu and wasn’t happy with her job at Safdarjung Hospital.” The outlet quoted DCP Tayal saying, “He suspected her of having an extramarital affair and was angry that she wasn’t leaving her job. The woman was living with her parents in Budhh Vihar. On Saturday around 2 pm, she was returning home from work when Mehta approached her and stabbed her multiple times on the road.”
Therefore, social media users gave a communal spin to a recent murder caught on video by alleging the perpetrator was Muslim. In reality, the individual seen here is Harish Mehta, a Hindu, who stabbed his wife Neelu to death after suspecting her of infidelity. Alt News has debunked several such false claims of ‘love jihad’, which you can read about here.
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