Old video of a missing girl already reunited with her parents is revived again - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 5, 2021
A post accompanying a video of a little girl crying is being shared widely across the social media platforms with a claim that ‘This little girl was found with a bunch of beggars in Mangalore, S. India. She calls herself Sonal Bipin Patel. The beggars claim that she was found in a train coming from Mumbai’. However, in the backdrop of the video, we can hear a man narrating that a 3 to 4 years little girl was brought to Jaitpur Gurudwara by some people and are waiting for her family members to come and take her. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a little girl found with a bunch of beggars in Mangalore.
Fact: This video is doing rounds on social media at least since November 2020. As reported by India Today, this video is actually from the Jaitpur village Gurdwara in New Delhi, and the little girl in the video was reunited with her family the same day she got lost. The Mangalore beggars story is doing rounds on the internet at least since 2019 associating it with another video of a sobbing little girl. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Reverse image search of the screenshots of the video led us to a 2020 Facebook post which shared the same video claiming that ‘This little girl was found at Indirapuram Gurudwara. Please share so that her family can be located’. This establishes that the video is doing rounds on the internet for quite a while. The same video was also uploaded on YouTube with a similar claim on 12 November 2020.
Further search led us to a fact-check article by India Today which debunked the video. As per the article, their investigation found that ‘the girl in the viral video was separated from her family in the Jaitpur Village area of New Delhi in 2020, when some people brought her to the Jaitpur Gurdwara Committee members. The Committee members immediately made an announcement and posted the viral video on the WhatsApp groups of Jaitpur. Luckily, the girl’s family approached the Gurdwara Committee on the same day and took her with them after showing valid ID proof.’
The article also reported that in their correspondence with Jaitpur Gurudwara management, they confirmed that the video was indeed shot in Jaitpur Gurudwara back in 2020.
Further, the article reported Jaitpur Gurdwara Management Committee Member Sandeep Singh Rai saying that ‘Last year, Jaitpur Gurdwara Management Committee had organised a camp related to the upcoming Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee elections (DSGMC). During the same time, some boys from the surrounding locality brought this little girl to us. We immediately made a missing announcement on the loudspeaker. We also made a video of the girl and shared it on the local WhatsApp groups of Jaitpur. Somehow, the video went viral with false claims and is still being circulated’.
So what is with the Mangalore beggars story:
A video of another little girl with the claim that Mangalore beggars found the little girl in a train coming from Mumbai went viral back in 2019. FACTLY has also written a fact-check story debunking the claim back then. FACTLY has also written about another fact-check story related to a different missing girl which can be read here.
All these establish that the video which is widely being shared with the Mangalore beggars claim is actually from the Jaitpur village Gurdwara in New Delhi. The little girl in the video was reunited with her family the same day she got lost.
To sum it up, an old video of a missing girl who got reunited with her parents is revived again.