Image of a Woman’s Charred Body Shared With a False Communal Claim

The image of the dead woman is being shared with communal twist and a claim that it is from Rajasthan.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Photo: Screenshot/Facebook)

The image of a half-burnt dead woman has gone viral on social media with a claim that “the 13-year-old girl was brutally raped and burnt alive.” The viral posts identified the girl as Payal Jain from Newai, Rajasthan, and the accused as Rizwan Ansari.

However, we found that the photograph of the half-burnt woman is from Gandhwani area of Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh. The woman was allegedly killed and then burnt by two men, Sohan and Govind, over a dispute.

CLAIM

The photo of a half-burnt woman has gone viral with a claim that “a 13-year-old girl from Newai, Rajasthan, Payal Jain, was raped and burnt by Rizwan Ansari”, who also belongs from the same village.

You can view an archived version of the post here, here and here.

We found several other posts made on groups and pages on Facebook that had a substantial amount of engagement. The Quint received this claim and image as a query on its WhatsApp tipline.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

After conducting a reverse image search, we found blurred versions of the same photo on MP’s regional news channels. Upon looking further into the search results, we found that the story was from Gandhwani area in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh.

The Quint reached out to the Superintendent of Police, Aditya Pratap Singh, who told us that the incident happened on 29 September and that there was was no communal angle to it. He added that she was murdered and then burnt, and one of the accused Sohanlal had been arrested, while Govind was still absconding.

According to the SP, there was a dispute between the accused and the victim over finances from getting another young woman married.

We also found a news report with the image of the woman published in a newspaper called Indore Samachar. The Quint reached out to the newspaper and got the clip from 30 September that carried that story.

(Photo: Screenshot/Indore Samachar e-paper)

We also found a video report of the incident which mentioned the same details.

According to several news reports, police registered a case of murder and started their investigation. Other news reports about the case identify the woman as 30-year-old Kesarbai, from Narmada Nagar.

Evidently, the image of a charred woman from Madhya Pradesh has been shared with a false claim to mislead the people.

(Note: The Quint has not used any post in the story due to its graphic nature.)

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