The child in the image died in August 2018 after a doctor administered a wrong injection to him

On Facebook, many users are sharing an image that has a photo of a crying man and a woman while holding an unconscious child. The post also has an accompanying message in Hindi whose English translation is- ‘This poor kid is suffering from cancer. Please provide financial assistance. May God shall not give this agony to your kids.1 Like- Re.1; 1 Comment- Rs 10; 1 Share- Rs 100’. Let’s try to check the claim made in the post.

The archived version of the post can be found here.

Claim: Image of a cancer-affected child fighting for his survival.
Fact: The child in the image is Aryan Kumar. He died in August 2018 after a doctor administered a wrong injection to him. So, the claim is FALSE.

The post first appeared on Facebook, on November 16, 2019, seeking financial assistance for a boy (in the image) purportedly suffering from cancer.

When the image in the post is cropped and subjected to Google Reverse Image search technique, a link of a news website ‘Janjwar’ was obtained in the search results. From the article, it was found that the child in the image is Aryan Kumar and he died in August 2018 after a doctor in a clinic at Siwan (Bihar) administered a wrong injection to him when he was brought for the treatment of his illness.

The information in another news report with the same image also corroborates that the child had died in August 2018. In both the articles, it wasn’t mentioned if the boy suffered from cancer or not. FACTLY also couldn’t independently verify if the boy was suffering from cancer before his death, but it could be ascertained that the boy isn’t alive now and had died in August 2018.

Also, when we tried to find out if Facebook gives money for the treatment of sick children when posts with their photos are liked or shared, answers by the Facebook team in the ‘Help section’ of the platform were found. In these responses, the company has clarified that it doesn’t provide any such thing and these responses can be seen here and here.

To conclude, the child in the image had died in August 2018 after a doctor administered a wrong injection to him.

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