Video from Sri Lanka falsely shared as a Hindu man named Harshvardhan saving a girl from a Muslim kidnapper

A video (here, here, and here) on social media allegedly shows a man named Harshavardhan saving a girl named Ayesha from being kidnapped by two men named Afroz and Imran. Some users are sharing this with captions like ‘This is the spirit of Sanatan Dharma – protecting dharma & the innocent 🕉🔥Harshvardhan is injured but out of danger 🏥🙏Let’s all salute this young lion! 🦁👏’.  Some users are sharing a few screenshots from this video with similar claims. We will fact-check this claim through this article.

An archived version of these posts can be found here and here.

Claim: The video shows a Hindu man named Harshvardhan rescuing a girl from Muslim kidnappers.

Fact: This video has nothing to do with India; it is from Sri Lanka. The rescuer is Mohammad Izadeen Arshad Ahmed, not Harshvardhan. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.

To verify the claim, we performed a reverse image search on a few keyframes from the viral video and located an earlier post by the Sri Lankan news agency NewsWire from 12 January 2025. 

The video originally reported that a 19-year-old girl was abducted in Daulagala, Kandy, Sri Lanka. The suspect in this incident is the victim’s cousin. Taking this as a hint, we performed a keyword search online and found multiple news reports (here, here, here, here, here, and here) regarding this incident from January 2025. 

As per the reports, the girl was rescued, and the suspect, Mohammed Nassar, was arrested while transporting the girl from Ampara to Kandy. The father of the victim reportedly stated that the abduction was carried out to extort money.

The man trying to stop the van in the video is identified as Mohammad Izadeen Arshad Ahmed, a 25-year-old electrician (here, here, and here). He was injured when he was pushed out of the van as he attempted to hold on. Local police commended his bravery.

To sum up, the viral video does not show a Hindu man named Harshvardhan saving a girl from Muslim abductors; it shows an incident from Sri Lanka where the rescuer is Mohammad Izadeen Arshad Ahmed.