A post with a video of a man abducting a woman is doing rounds on social media with the claim that the incident took place in Vikarabad, Telangana. A few other are sharing the same video as that of an incident from ECIL in Hyderabad. Through this article verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a man abducting a woman in Vikarabad.
Fact: Telangana State Police through a Facebook post clarified that the video is not related to Vikarabad abduction. The video is actually related to the abduction of a woman which took place in Kolar, Karnataka. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Google search with the keywords ‘Vikarabad Woman Kidnap’ led us to a Facebook post by Telangana State Police clarifying that the video which is being widely circulated as of Vikarabad woman kidnap is not related to the case. In the post, the police also stated that there is no recorded CCTV video footage available as far as the Vikarabad abduction is concerned. Further, Vikarabad police on their YouTube channel uploaded a video stating the same.
Further, the search led us to a video by a Kannada news channel which published the same video in the past. As per this report, the incident took place in Kolar and the woman was finally rescued by the police. News articles reporting the incident can be read here and here.
In the light of the recent abduction of a 26-year-old woman in Vikarabad, videos like those in the post are being falsely attributed to the Vikarabad abduction and being circulated on social media platforms.
When a twitter user tagged the Telangana police alerting them about the video to be of a kidnapping incident from ‘ECIL X Roads’ in Hyderabad, Rachakonda police commissioner, Mahesh Bhagwat clarified that ‘This incident has not occurred at ECIL. Video was edited and inserted the text wrongly’. He later tweeted the news video that mentions the incident to be from Kolar, Karnataka.
To sum it up, CCTV footage of a girl being kidnapped in Kolar, Karnataka is falsely being linked to various places surrounding Hyderabad.
Update (OCTOBER 01, 2020):
While the video was first shared as that of a kidnapping incident in Vikarabad, it was later shared as that from ECIL. The article title and content is updated to address both the claims.
