Video of ‘Exorcism’ Falsely Shared as Forced Conversion of Hindu Minor in Pak

Pir Muhammedullah has been arrested twice for electrocuting children under the guise of exorcising 'demons'.

A viral video showing a man conversing with a minor girl, before electrocuting her with small shocks in the presence of another man is being widely shared on social media, to claim that it shows a Muslim man in Pakistan forcefully converting a Hindu child to Islam.

However, we found that the video is not related to religious conversion. As per reports, the video shows a man identified as Muhammadullah, a fake faith healer who was arrested for using electric shocks on children under the guise of exorcising ‘jinns’ from them. Muhammadullah was arrested by Peshawar Police in 2020 and 2021 for the same.

CLAIM

The video is being shared with the following text that claims:

“A small Hindu child in Pakistan, forcefully kidnapped and being given electric shock to convert. This is how they converted 20 percent of Bharat.”

The video was shared on right-wing writer Nishant Azad's verified Twitter account with the same claim.

We found that the claim was shared on Reddit as well.

Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

While looking for information on the video, we came across an article by Pakistani fact-checking organisation Soch Fact Check, which carried photos of the same claim.

The beginning of this article discussed the contents of the 40-second video, which showed a minor girl crying as “a man (posing as a faith healer) asks her how many jinns have possessed” her, to which she responds in Pashto after which he electrocutes her.

Taking a cue from here, we used keywords on Google to look for reports and were led to an article by Dunya TV dated 10 August 2020, which noted that a fake ‘pir’ (faith healer) called Muhammadullah was arrested in Peshawar for electrocuting children.

The article carried a tweet published on 9 August 2020 by Peshawar Police’s verified Twitter account. The tweets rough translation noted that the ‘fake pir’ was arrested for electrocution in Peshawar’s Achini Bala after a video of him went viral on social media. The tweet also identified him as “Pir Muhammadullah, son of Qudratullah”.

We looked up the man’s name and came across a report by The News, a Pakistani news portal. This article noted that as per officials, Muhammadullah was arrested during a raid after a video of him electrocuting a boy went viral.

Adding the word ‘arrest’ to the man’s name in Urdu led us to a The Independent Urdu report dated 27 April 2021.

The report noted that Pir Muhammadullah had been re-arrested despite being released on bail and being warned to never repeat his actions and illegally extort money from people.

As per the report, the police went looking for him after receiving complaints and found that he was electrocuting people and extorting people again.

We then looked for Muhammedullah’s social media profiles and found videos of him carrying out similar activities, published on 29 March. His Facebook page also carries videos of him performing rituals.

Clearly, the video does not show a Muslim man forcefully converting a Hindu girl to Islam. The clip shows a fake faith healer electrocuting a minor in order to “exorcise” her and was later arrested by the Peshawar police for torturing children.

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