Fact Check: Shocking suitcase murder in Uttarakhand given false communal twist on Twitter
India Today
A claim was made on social media that a Muslim man from Uttarakhand killed his Hindu girlfriend Kajal and stuffed her body in a suitcase to get rid of it. However, police confirmed that both, the accused, and the victim are Muslim.
In a bizarre and macabre incident, a man was caught at a hotel with the body of his partner stuffed in a suitcase in Piran Kaliyar of Uttarakhand's Haridwar district. Shocking photos and videos of the incident have been shared online. Some of these posts, however, come with a false claim.
Several people tweeted the video and photos of the accused man alleging the incident was an instance of “love jihad” — a right-wing Hindu conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men target Hindu women and convert them to Islam through marriage.
"After killing his girlfriend Kajal, a man from Jwalapur who was planning to dispose of the body in a suitcase at the Kaliyar Guest House, has been arrested. Love jihad and murder," the translation of one such tweet in Hindi read.
Similar claims have been archived here and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that the claim was misleading. Both the accused and the victim were Muslims.
AFWA Probe
Many of the tweets that alleged the incident to be an instance of interfaith love claimed the name of the victim was Kajal. We checked for recent crime reports from Uttarakhand where victims named Kajal were involved. However, there were none.
