POSTED ON JUNE 20, 2023

DCP Gomti Zone tweeted a note saying that there was no incident of a woman beheading six Muslim men in Babatpur.

AISHWARYA VARMA

A screenshot of an article, purportedly published by the news channel UP Tak, is going viral on social media.

The claim: The screenshot shows an article about a Hindu Dalit woman beheading six men in a temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Babatpur (in Varanasi district) after she was threatened with rape and religious conversion.

Social media users are sharing the claim with the article’s Hindi headline, which reads, A Hindu Dalit woman who is now absconding killed and beheaded six Muslim men after being threatened with rape and religious conversion; six heads were found in Babatpur’s Kali temple.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

The claim is extremely viral on Facebook.

The Quint has received queries of the screenshot’s verification on its WhatsApp tipline.

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here and here.)

Is it true?: No, no such incident took place.

A tweet from Varanasi police’s DCP Gomti zone’s account clarified that the “fake news” being shared was “completely false.”

Neeraj Gupta, the cluster head for Tak Channels, told The Quint that UP Tak had not published this story “in any form.”

How did we find out?: Using relevant keywords, we looked for news reports on the incident, but did not come across any reports of this kind.

However, it led us to a tweet shared by Varanasi police’s Gomti zone Deputy Commissioner of Police’s account, calling the incident “fake news.”

DCP Gomti Zone’s twitter account shared a note on the screenshot.

It mentioned that the post was “fake news,” calling it “completely false.”

“No such incident has taken place in Babatpur, which is under Phulpur police station in Varanasi’s Gomti zone. Varanasi police refutes this false claim,” it read.

Did UP Tak publish this article?: We then looked for the article on UP Tak’s website and social media accounts but found no sign of this report.

Even the website’s archives did not have this report in its records.

The Quint reached out to Neeraj Gupta, the cluster head for Tak channels, who confirmed that UP Tak had not “done this (story) in any forms.”

“This is neither our font, nor our layout..UP Tak didn’t do this in any form, rather we are doing a fact check story on this.”

Neeraj Gupta, Cluster Head, Tak Channels (India Today)

Conclusion: The viral screenshot in the claim is fake. UP Tak did not publish any such article, and the Varanasi police said that no such incident took place in their jurisdiction.

(With inputs from Piyush Rai.)

Courtesy : The Quint