CCTV footage of two men entering an elevator before drugging and abducting two girls is being shared on social media.
The claim: The video is being shared with a caption in Telugu, which roughly translates to, “Karnataka, Bangalore - See how muslims jihadis are kidnapping Hindu girls in the lift by making them smell of chlorofoam. The girls were put into anesthesia in a lift and straight out of the car parked in the car parking. There is no trace of girls and women who were kidnapped!! (sic).”
We also received this claim on our WhatsApp tipline.
(Archived versions of more claims can be seen here, here, and here.)
But…?: The communal claim is false and the video is not from India.
It shows an incident of a man kidnapping his daughters in Egypt in December 2023 and is not from Bengaluru.
How did we find out?: We ran a reverse image search using Google Lens on the video, which led us to an Iranian language website, mentioning that it showed an incident from Egypt.
A search with the keywords “Egypt men kidnap girls in elevator” led us to several social media posts and news reports about the incident.
One such Instagram post, shared on 20 December 2023, carried a screenshot of the viral video.
It mentioned that the country’s Ministry of Interior had arrested two people in connection to the incident, identifying one as the father of the girls, and the other as his driver, an accomplice to the crime.
Jordanian news website Roya News added that “family disputes were behind the father’s kidnapping attempt,” who left for “an Arab country” with one of the girls while the other one stayed with their mother.
The Quint's Team WebQoof debunked the same communal claim in January, finding the relevant information in a BBC report and a post on Egypt’s Interior Ministry’s Instagram account.
The authorities said that the incident took place on 13 December 2023. The girls’ parents were divorced, their statement mentioned, and their father had attempted to take his daughter out of the country via an airport in Cairo, without the mother’s consent.
Their mother had full custody of their children during the separation.
Conclusion: A video of a man kidnapping his daughter has gone viral with the false claim that it shows Muslim men abducting girls in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
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