A video going viral on social media (here, here, and here) features a news anchor allegedly reporting a story about a 30-year-old American tourist who was gang-raped in Manali, Himachal Pradesh. Let’s verify the claim through this article.
Claim: An American woman was gang-raped in Manali, Himachal Pradesh recently in 2024.
Fact: The viral CBS news report dates back to 04 June 2013. A 30-year-old tourist left for Vashisht (three kilometers from Old Manali) on the night of 03 June 2013 around 10 PM to meet friends. After leaving her friend’s house at 1 AM, she was on the highway when a truck driver offered her a lift. The driver and his accomplices then took her to a secluded place and raped her. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
A reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to the original video on the CBS News YouTube channel, published on 04 June 2013. The description of the video reads: “Indian police say an American woman was gang-raped in a resort town in Northern India while hitchhiking back to her guest house in the town of Manali. Norah O’Donnell reports.”
A Google keyword search led us to several reports (here and here) from June 2013 about the incident. According to these reports, the 30-year-old tourist left for Vashisht (three kilometres from Old Manali) on the night of 03 June 2013 around 10 PM to meet her friends. She left her friend’s house at 1 AM and was on the highway when the accused trucker stopped to offer her a lift. The trucker and his accomplices then took her to a secluded spot and she was raped. This confirmed that the incident is not recent.
To sum up, an old CBS news report involving the gang-rape of an American woman in Manali in 2013 is being shared as a recent incident.
