A video of a man brutally attacking a young woman lying unconscious on the road, with a severe head injury is being widely shared across social media platforms claiming that the video shows a Muslim man named Salim killing a Hindu girl named Aarti in broad daylight after she rejected his love proposal (here, here, & here). In this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: This video shows a Muslim man named Salim killing a Hindu girl named Aarti in broad daylight.
Fact: The viral video shows visuals of a murder in the Vasai area of Maharashtra’s Palghar district. According to media reports and the police, the accused in this incident is Rohit Ramnivas Yadav, who is not from the Muslim community. The incident took place on 18 June 2024, around 8:30 am in the Chinchpada area of Vasai East. Reports and police statements indicate that Aarti and Rohit had been in a relationship for a few years, but Aarti recently ended it. Suspecting that Aarti was involved with another man, Rohit Yadav attacked and killed her. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the veracity of the viral claim and gather information about the video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video. This search led us to a news report by ‘TV9 Bharatvarsha’ featuring one of the key frames from the video. According to the report, the incident occurred on 18 June 2024, around 8:30 a.m. in the Vasai area near Mumbai. The report further stated that the deceased is 20-year-old Aarti Yadav, and the accused is Rohit Yadav. Rohit brutally attacked Aarti multiple times on the head with a wrench, killing her.
We then conducted a keyword search to find more details about this incident. This search led us to several news reports (here, here, here, and here). According to these reports, the police stated that Aarti and Rohit had been in a relationship for a few years but Aarti recently broke up with him. Suspecting that Aarti was having an affair with another man, Rohit Yadav followed her on the morning of 18 June 2024, around 8:30 a.m., and violently attacked her with a spanner until she succumbed to her injuries. Waliv police arrived at the scene within five minutes of being informed about the attack, took Rohit into custody, and recovered the wrench he used to kill Aarti. The police further stated that Rohit had been booked under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
We then accessed the FIR filed in this case on the Maharashtra police website. According to the FIR, the incident took place on 18 June 2024, around 8:30 am in the Chinchpada area of Vasai East, and the accused is Rohit Ramnivas Yadav. Furthermore, we contacted Senior Inspector Jairam Ranware of Waliv police station, who confirmed that the accused in this incident is Rohit Ramnivas Yadav (alias Rohit Pal). He further stated that both the accused and the deceased belong to the Hindu community and emphasized that there is no communal angle involved in this incident. From all this information, it is evident that the accused in this incident is Rohit Ramnivas Yadav, and he does not belong to the Muslim community.
To sum up, a video of a murder in the Vasai area of Maharashtra’s Palghar district is being shared with a false communal narrative.
