A video showing an angry mob thrashing a man in front of police personnel is doing rounds on social media with a claim that a group of 400 people have entered Tamil Nadu’s Salem to kidnap children.
A Facebook user shared the video with the caption, “At Salem kidnapping Gang member is locked while kidnapping a school girl.. he said at Salem his gang of 400 members are there for kidnapping work.. so care full to watch a children’s…”
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FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral claim and found it to be misleading.
We extracted keyframes of the video and performed a Reverse Image Search, which led us to a news report by Tamil Oneindia, published on February 21, 2019.
As per the report, the video shows an incident from Tamil Nadu’s Thanjavur old bus stand where a miscreant under the influence of alcohol tried to abduct a school-going girl and was caught by the public.
The incident was also reported by regional news websites providing the same details.
Further, we did not find any credible media report backing the claim shared with this viral video.
Therefore, the claim that a ‘group of 400 child kidnappers have entered Tamil Nadu’s Salem’ is false. The viral video is from Thanjavur, not Salem and dates back to 2019.
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