Video of a woman being kidnapped in Ecuador is falsely shared as that of an incident from India
A video (here and here) is going viral on social media, showing two men trying to kidnap a woman, with claims that the incident took place in India. Let’s check the truth behind this video.
Claim: The viral video shows a woman being kidnapped in India.
Fact: The video is from Ecuador, not India. CCTV footage from 26 September 2024, shows a woman being kidnapped in the Las Casas area of northwestern Quito. Local media confirmed that she was later released in Chillogallo, south of the capital. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same video uploaded on 27 September 2024 by the Ecuadorian media outlet Radio Pichincha on their X handle. The caption stated that a woman was kidnapped by individuals travelling in a black sedan without license plates. The incident occurred at 19:56 on the streets of Ruiz de Castilla and Aldana, in the La América and Las Casas sector, north of Quito.
Further research led us to articles from several Ecuadorian local media news outlets (here, here and here) that reported this incident. According to these reports, a CCTV video from 26 September 2024 shows a woman being kidnapped in the Las Casas area of northwestern Quito. A man approached her with flowers before suddenly forcing her into a black car without license plates, while she screamed for help. Locals tried to intervene and chased the vehicle. Police later confirmed that the woman was released in Chillogallo, south of the capital. This confirms that the video is from Ecuador and not from India.
To sum up, a video of a woman being kidnapped in Ecuador is falsely shared as that of an incident from India.