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  • 2022-10-28 (xsd:date)
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  • Sri Lankan Facebook users misled by photo of bound woman from India in 2019 (en)
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  • A photo showing a woman with her hands bound with thick ropes was shared thousands of times among Sri Lankan Facebook users, misleading viewers into believing the incident took place in Sri Lanka. However, the photo was published in 2019 alongside news reports from India, about a woman who was beaten up over a family dispute. The photo, which shows a woman with her wrists bound behind her back with thick rope, was shared in this post published on October 21, 2022. It has since been shared 6,700 times. The translated Sinhala-language caption reads: The poor will only come to punish the poor. Screenshot of the Facebook post captured on October 25, 2022. Similar posts were also shared hundreds of times on Facebook here and here -- misleading other users who left comments indicating they believed the incident took place in Sri Lanka recently. One commenter wrote in Sinhala, Look at the sight of this woman. Probably doesn’t have anything to eat at home and stole for the children. Ranil Rajapaksa and his gang are the gang of thieves who should be bound up. Shame on our people. The name Ranil Rajapaksa is a mash-up of current President Ranil Wickremesinghe and the ousted Rajapaksa brothers -- Gotabaya and Mahinda -- who were pushed out of the President and Prime Minister's office respectively after months of protests accusing them of sparking the country's worst economic crisis since 1945. Critics accuse Wickremesinghe of being too close to the ousted Rajapaksa family. Another commenter said: Do Sri Lankans have no empathy? This woman clearly stole because of poverty. Punishment isn’t the answer to every social issue. The image was shared as Sri Lankan media reported a rise in crime across the country following the economic crisis. But it has been shared in a misleading context -- the photo was published in news reports of a woman being beaten up in eastern India in 2019. A reverse image search and keyword search on Google led to this Hindi-language news report published on Indian news website Jagran on July 15, 2019. A similar photo of the bound woman is included alongside the article. Below is a screenshot comparison of the image from the misleading post (L) and the photo published in Jagran news (R): Screenshot comparison of the image from the misleading post (L) and the photo published in Jagran news (R): The report is titled: Hazaribagh news - Half-naked woman tied up and beaten in Hazaribagh. The article reads in part: In Tatijharia, Hazaribagh, a woman was tied up and beaten. However, the police acted swiftly on the request of the woman's son and arrested the two accused on the spot. Tatijharia is a village in Hazaribagh district, in India's eastern Jharkhand state. The report goes on to state the woman was beaten up over a family dispute. The incident was reported in other Indian news websites in 2019 as seen here and here . As of October 28, 2022, AFP has found no official reports of a woman being tied up and beaten in Sri Lanka. (en)
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