Woman makes false child-kidnapping, organ trade claims using old image from Ghana

A video where a woman claims that children are being kidnapped and sold for organ trade is circulating on social media. She makes the claims while flashing a photograph of children lying supine on the ground in the background. In the video, the woman asserts that these children were kidnapped and their organs, including eyes and ears, were dismembered. However, she does not mention when and where the alleged incident took place.

This video was sent to Alt News on its official app, which suggests that the video could be circulating on WhatsApp. The woman is speaking in Tamil.

Fact-check

With the help of Google reverse image search, Alt News found that the image on the basis of which the woman is making claims about a gang gouging out organs from children’s bodies is not from India. This image was earlier debunked by AFP when it was falsely shared using different claims alleging that the photograph depicts the aftermath of a massacre in African countries like Congo, Cameron and Nigeria. The image, however, is from Ghana.

It’s a March 2017 image which shows dead bodies of students killed in a storm in Ghana. This image was uploaded with a caption, “Kintampo waterfalls disaster”, on March 2017.

The man in a red striped shirt corroborates that the viral image is the same as the picture from Ghana.

Twenty students had died at Kintampo falls, a popular tourist located in Central Ghana after a massive tree crashed into the water. The incident was reported at the time by AFP.

In conclusion, a false claim about child-kidnappers who gouged out organs from children’s bodies was made by a woman based on a two-year-old photograph from Ghana that had nothing to do with human trafficking or organ trading. The photograph actually depicts the dead bodies of children who died in a natural disaster.