A photo of a youth with a chopped-off lip is being shared on social media claiming that he is a Muslim named Mohammed Israr and that his lips were bitten off by a woman when he attempted to rape her in the Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of a Muslim youth whose lip was bitten off by a woman when he tried to rape her in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh.
Fact: The photo does show the picture of the rape accused whose lip was bitten off by a woman when he tried to rape her in the Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh. But the name of the accused is Mohit Saini, not Mohammed Israr as mentioned in the post. The accused does not belong to the Muslim community. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar picture was found in an article published by the ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ on its website. Sharing the picture, this article reported that a woman had cut off the lips of a youth when he attempted to rape her in a village near the Daraula police station area in Meerut district of Uttar Pradesh. This article reported the accused youth’s name as Mohit Saini.
Reporting the complete details of this incident, several other news websites have also published articles on 05 February 2023. They can be seen here, here and here. According to these reports, on 04 February 2023 afternoon, the accused grabbed the woman by her back while she was working in the field, tore off her clothes and forced her to kiss him. In an act of self-defence, the woman bit off the accused lips and shouted for help. The villagers nearby reportedly caught the accused and handed him over to the police.
The victim filed a complaint & as per the FIR at the Daraula police station, the accused is identified as Mohit Saini and the accused father’s name was mentioned as Mulchand Saini. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the rape accused shown in the photo is not a Muslim and there is no communal angle in the incident.
To sum it up, an image of a rape accused from Meerut was shared with a communal narrative.
