Referring to an article published by the ‘Asianet News Hindi’, a post is being shared on social media claiming that five miscreants were caught raping a half-burnt dead body of a woman in the Sikar district of Rajasthan. Ashok Swain, a Professor at Uppsala University, shared the same article of ‘Asianet News Hindi’ and tweeted, “While Indian media spreading fake news about the locked grave in Pakistan to keep rapists away, in Sikar, India, five Hindus have been caught for raping the dead body of a woman by taking it out of a burning pyre.” Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: 5 Hindus were caught raping a half-burnt dead body in the Sikar district of Rajasthan.
Fact: Sikar Police through a tweet clarified that the news reported by the ‘Asianet News Hindi’ is false. As per the police officials, three days after the cremation of a woman, an outsider, who came to meet his acquaintance, was beaten up by the villagers on suspicion of performing tantric rituals with the corpse. Sikar Police in the tweet emphasized that no such heinous activity as rape was detected in the incident. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
‘Asianet News Hindi’ deleted their article reporting about five miscreants raping a half-burnt dead body in the Sikar district of Rajasthan. When we searched for the details of the claim made in the post using relevant keywords, we found an article published by ‘Patrika’ related to the same incident on 19 April 2023. The article reported that police had arrested five persons from the crematorium ground in the Ajitgarh area after the villagers thrashed all five on suspicion of performing tantric rituals with the burnt corpse of a woman.
According to the article, relatives of the cremated woman thrashed five people by alleging that they were performing tantric rituals with their family member’s body. ‘News 18’ also published an article related to this incident.
In another article published by ‘Patrika’ on 20 April 2023, it was reported that Shankar Lal, one of the five arrested persons, had informed police that the incident took place while they were returning from Kohri village to show his farmland in Ajitgarh area to his guru. Shankar Lal reportedly told police that they came under the suspicion of villagers while they were passing nearby the crematorium on the path of their farmland. As per the report, both parties reached a compromise and neither of them filed an FIR related to the incident.
When the article reported by the ‘Asianet News Hindi’ was shared on social media claiming rape on the cremated woman, the Sikar police officials published a tweet clarifying that the article published by the ‘Asianet News Hindi’ is false and misleading. As per the police officials, three days after the cremation of the woman, an outsider, who came to meet his acquaintance, was beaten up in suspicion by the villagers. Sikar police officials in the tweet emphasized that no such heinous activity as rape was detected in the incident.
Lately, when an image of a locked tomb in Hyderabad was shared as the picture from Pakistan by claiming that parents in Pakistan were locking the graves of their daughters in fear of rape, Factly published a fact-check article about this claim. In the wake of many Indian news sites falsely attributing this image to Pakistan, many users shared screenshots of the ‘Asianet News Hindi’ article alleging the rape of a cremated woman in Rajasthan.
To sum it up, the viral claims about five Hindus raping a half-burnt woman in the Sikar district of Rajasthan are not true.
