A video showing masked men talking about the value at which they will buy and sell children is going viral on social media with a claim that this is a real incident of children being kidnapped.
The clip shows several children with tied hands and tapes around their mouths lying unconsious on the floor of the jungle. Their school bags can also be spotted near them.
In the background, the voice of a man points out that these children were kidnapped and now are being sold.
However, this is not a real incident but a scripted video. A longer version of the video carries a disclaimer which mentions that this video is 'complete fiction'.
CLAIM
The video is being shared with a claim suggesting that the video shows a gang that kidnaps children.
Similar claims can be seen here and here.
The Quint also received multiple queries about this video on our WhatsApp Tipline.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We divided the video into multiple keyframe using a video verification tool, InVid and ran a reverse image search on few of them along with Hindi keywords like 'child kidnapping'.
This led us to a longer version of the same video on Facebook which was uploaded on 9 July 2022 by a user named Sachin Thakur, who also runs a YouTube channel.
The caption of the video read, "Kidnappers of these children, please share video" in Hindi.
At 0:30, it also carried a disclaimer in Hindi and English, which said, "Please Read the video Disclaimer carefully. This is not a real incident."
At 1:27 timestamp, the video carried another disclaimer which said, "This video is complete fiction, all the events in the video are scripted and made for awareness purpose. It does not promote any kind of activity or defame any kind of ritual. This video has nothing to do with any real incident."
Even though we could not independently verify the original creator of this scripted video, it is clear with the disclaimers that the video is not real.
We have reached out to Thakur who uploaded this video in July. The story will be updated after receiving a reply from him.
Similar story about a scripted video of child kidnapping can be read here.
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