Fact-Check: Video of Kidnapping in Egypt Falsely Peddled as Clip From Bengaluru

It shows an incident of a man kidnapping his daughters in Egypt on 13 December 2023 and is not from Bengaluru.

A video showing CCTV footage of two men entering an elevator to drug and kidnap two minors has gone viral on social media.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows an incident from Bengaluru, Karnataka, where two girls were abducted after being forced to inhale chloroform, a chemical compound which acts as a sedative when inhaled.

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video is from Egypt.

• It shows two girls being abducted by their father and one of the two accomplices from the mother's custody.

How did we find out?: We divided the video into keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

• This led us to a BBC report dated 21 December 2023, the translated version of which mentioned that the video showed "the drugging and kidnapping of two girls inside an elevator in Egypt."

• It mentioned the the Egyptian Ministry of Interior had found that the father of the two girls had kidnapped them, with the aid of two other people.

• As per Sky News Arabia, the incident took place on 13 December in Nasr city, where the girls' mother filed a complaint against their father.

• It added that the couple had separated, and the girls were living with their father, an accountant, until 2022, after which the mother obtained their legal custody.

• The report also mentioned that the father had fled the country with one of his daughters after committing the crime.

Statement by the authorities: We came across a post and statement regarding the viral video on the Egyptian Ministry of Interior's verified Instagram account.

• According to the statement, the girls' father had two accomplices – one to help him abduct the girls and the other to drive the car – who had a financial agreement with the father in exchange for committing the crime.

• The post added that the accomplices had been arrested after legal action and the Prosecutor-General had taken over the case.

Conclusion: The video shows two girls being kidnapped by their father in Nasr City, Egypt.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)