False Images Shared to Misrepresent an Old Incident of Muslim Incestuous Marriage as a Recent Event - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 2, 2023
Images of a man and a woman are being shared on social media claiming that the man, a Muslim, married his daughter in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal in 2020 and subsequently impregnated her. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Images of a Muslim man who married his daughter in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri in 2020.
Fact: While there was an incident in 2007 in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri involving a Muslim man marrying his daughter and impregnating her, the images shared in the post are not related to that event. Since the post presents an old incident as a recent one using images that are not connected to the case in question, it is MISLEADING.
Initially, we conducted an internet search using relevant keywords to determine if any incidents of this nature were reported in Jalpaiguri since 2020. But our search did not yield any relevant results. However, in 2007, the Times of India reported that a Muslim man from Jalpaiguri married his daughter and impregnated her.
The same incident was also reported by BBC and Navbharat Times in 2007. As per the media reports, in 2007, Afazuddin Ali, who was 36 years old at the time, allegedly married his teenage daughter in the name of divine sanction and impregnated her. Ali’s wife, Sakina, served as the prime witness to the wedding. When villagers expressed their outrage, the Police intervened and arrested both Ali and Sakina. However, because the lower court lacked criminal jurisdiction and no specific charges were brought against the couple, they were subsequently released.
Nevertheless, images shared in the viral post do not show Afazuddin Ali and his daughter. Through a reverse image search of the viral images, we traced their origin back to a Twitter account based in Pakistan. Although the account has since been deactivated, the images were first shared on 18 July 2020. To gather more information about the people in the picture, we contacted the user’s alternate account and other followers. This article will be updated as soon as the required information becomes available.
To sum it up, the images being circulated are unrelated and are being falsely attributed to an old incident of a Muslim man marrying his own daughter in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri.