This photo has circulated online since at least 2015 in connection with an unrelated case in a different Indian state
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 19, 2019 at 06:00
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The photo was published here on Facebook on December 6, 2019.
The caption reads: “There can be no Human Rights for rapists, traitors and terrorists. Shame on people talking about Human Rights today.
#hyderabadpolice #Encounter #HumanRights.”
The misleading image and claim was shared on the same day that four suspects were shot dead by police in Hyderabad in the southern Indian state of Telangana after a female veterinarian was gang-raped and murdered on November 27, 2019, as reported here by AFP.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:
The same photo was shared on Facebook here and here; on Twitter here and here; and Instagram here and here with a similar claim.
The same photo can be seen at the seven-minute 13-second mark in this video report by Indian media channel Tv9 Gujurati on December 6, 2019.
Below is a screenshot of the photo used in the video:
The photo has been shared in a misleading context; a reverse image search on Google found the photo has circulated online since at least 2015, four years before the Hyderabad rape-murder case.
It was published here in a report by Chennai-based English-language newspaper The Hindu on April 7, 2015.
The report’s first paragraph reads: “Twenty woodcutters from Tamil Nadu, found felling red sanders, were killed in an alleged encounter in the Seshachalam forest at the foot of the Tirumala hills on Tuesday.”
Below is a screenshot of the photo in The Hindu’s report:
The incident was reported to have happened in the forests of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on April 7, 2015.
A similar photograph was published here in The Hindu's magazine frontline news article on May 15, 2015, crediting their photographer K.V. Poornachandra Kumar.
The same incident was reported here by Mumbai-based English-language newspaper The Times of India and here by India’s English-language news magazine India Today on the same day.
A senior police officer with Telangana state police Rema Rajeshwari told AFP on December 18, 2019, on the phone that, "this is not Hyderabad police but an old image from Andhra Pradesh."
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