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  • 2019-05-21 (xsd:date)
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  • No, this photo does not show an Indian Christian family forced to strip naked (en)
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  • Posts circulating online in Africa claim to show an Indian pastor and his family who were forced by villagers to strip naked as punishment for preaching the Gospel. However, a reverse image search shows that the photo shows a family who stripped naked in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in 2015 in protest against police officers' alleged inaction over a reported robbery. BREAKING NEWS: Please pray for the Christian Pastor and his wife, being humiliated by Indians in Utter (sic) Pradesh -India, for preaching the Gospel, reads one of the posts, which we’ve archived here . They were made naked and March around town as punishment. Lord have Mercy. The post was shared in a Kenyan Facebook group with more than 1.9 million followers. Screenshot taken on May 21, 2019 shows the misleading image posted on Facebook This version of the post, published by a Nigerian account in January 2019, was shared more than 6,500 times. This version of the misleading post racked up more than 6,500 shares The same photo and caption were also shared in this Facebook group attracting more than 150 shares. Another version of the misleading post on Facebook Running a reverse image search for the photo on Google led to a larger, uncropped version of the same picture. This version shows four adults without their clothes, not two. Screenshot taken on May 21, 2019 of the larger image of stripped couple after a Google search Searching for that larger image led us to news articles published in 2015 about a Dalit family in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. Dalits are people belonging to a lower caste in India’s traditional caste system. According to the articles, the family stripped naked in protest against police officers whom they accused of ignoring their robbery complaint. India Today used the photo in this story in October 2015, which reported that the family were arrested for obscenity when they stripped naked at a police station in Gautam Budh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. Similar reports about the family were published here and here . Contradictory reports said that the police were responsible for stripping the couple. But in this video , the victims confirmed that they stripped voluntarily as a sign of protest. Our India fact-checking team was able to provide a translation of the video. We took off our clothes, one of the victims is heard saying in Hindi. The police are not filing our complaint, that is why we took a decision to remove our clothes. The police were paying no heed to our complaints against the robbers, so we resorted to taking this action. A senior police officer interviewed in the video accused the family of gross behaviour leading to their arrest. I have received a copy of the report and we have initiated a preliminary investigation, the police officer says. These people who took their clothes off were arrested for snatching a pistol from one of our officers. They have been booked for rioting, indecency in public and disrupting the work of the police. It’s clear from these earlier reports, published years before the false posts started circulating in 2018, that this photo does not show a Christian pastor whose family were stripped to humiliate them. (en)
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