Delhi crime footage falsely shared as 'Sri Lanka burglary'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 6, 2022 at 14:41
- 2 min read
- By AFP Sri Lanka, AFP India
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"In Sri Lanka Colombo / Robbery at Wellawatte...tell people not to open Door immediately without confirming," reads a Facebook post from July 3.
Wellawatte is a neighbourhood in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.
In the video, a woman opens her door before a group of men burst in, brandishing weapons. They tie the hands of a young man present and force him to lie on the floor.
Local media reported a spike in crime in Sri Lanka as the island battles an economic crisis that has seen crippling shortages of fuel, medicine and other essentials.
The video was shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here and here and on WhatsApp.
Delhi burglary
However, the claim is false.
A reverse search on Google using keyframes from the video found the footage in a report from July 7, 2021 by Hindi news channel India TV.
The report is titled: "Delhi: Robbers barge into home, take woman, kids hostage - Shocking video".
It says the clip shows a group of men who broke into a house and held a family at gunpoint in Delhi's Uttam Nagar neighbourhood.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip in one of the false posts (left) and the video featured in India TV report (right):
The burglary was reported by various Indian media outlets, including here and here.
A representative for Uttam Nagar police said the footage showed a burglary in Delhi.
"The incident happened on July 7, 2021, in which CCTV footage of the robbery by taking a family hostage had surfaced," the spokesperson told AFP.
"The police investigated the incident and after four days, arrested both the accused Mukul and Ankush.
"The looted items were also recovered from them and they were sent to jail."
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