English, Fake News
 

A case dating back to 2007 is now being circulated with a religious angle

3

A post is currently going viral in social media claiming that a Muslim taxi/cab driver has murdered 250 persons from Hindu community. Let’s check the authenticity of these claims.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Muslim Taxi Driver in Meerut murdered 250 Non-Muslims in last four months.

Fact: The incident being reported is actually from 2007 and did not take place recently. There is no conclusive information on the motive of the murders or the identity of the victims. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

When searched for ‘Meerut 250 murders’ in Google, you get few results and the latest one is published by ‘Hindu Existence’ website on 2nd June, 2019. You can also notice a article by News18 published on 30th March, 2007 and the content for the article published by Hindu Existence is copied from the News18 article by twisting it and giving it a religious angle.

It is also claimed in both Hindu Existence and News18 article that one person has murdered these 250 person in a span on 4 months, but a Times of India article claims that a gang of 35 members are suspected to have murdered 250 persons.

Finally, the incident of a driver murdering about 250 members is from 2007 and did not take place recently.

Update: To know more about the issue, FACTLY contacted Mr Dipesh Juneja’s office, who was Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Meerut in 2007, (who was quoted in the news article) and spoke to them over the telephone. His office clarified that the murders were done by a gang back in 2007 and there was no religious angle to the case. They have also asked to curb the spread of this fake news. 

Did you watch our Facebook live on Fake News (Misinformation)

Share.

About Author

A great believer in democracy, Bharath is convinced that the citizens of this country have a huge role to play in making it successful and effective. But he observes that with misinformation taking centre stage in the socio-political discourse, the very foundation of democracy is at threat. The shared belief that every citizen has the right to factual information without bias is what made Bharath associate with Factly since its inception. He heads Operations and Fact-checking projects at Factly.

3 Comments

  1. Your work is appreciated but one question: are there not at least 100 Hindus out of 250!?
    Is there any report that there’s a Muslim person in the victims!?
    Under what motive, they committed these killings!? It’s a very simple logic and is evident that there’s a religious angle/motive behind this. No one kills 250 members in such fashion/passion except for religious interests.

    • Nidumolu Vaishnavi on

      Hello Omkar. Thanks for your question. We will get back to you as soon as possible. In the meantime, we appreciate your involvement with our content here on our page. We would like to acknowledge your engagement. For this purpose, could you please send your email address to hi@factly.in
      Thanks!
      Team Factly.

  2. And how can you believe your report!? How far your’s is genuine!? You didn’t post any confirmation letter/video about the police officers’ saying this.

scroll