Unrelated photo of a different girl misidentified as Hathras gang-rape victim

Social media is abuzz with posts clamoring the justice for the deceased victim of the Hathras gang rape. Among the viral posts, a photo of a young girl wearing a pink dress in the field is being shared as the photo of the 19-year-old victim from Uttar Pradesh. Many users mistakenly identified this photo as of Hathras gang-rape victim.

Fact Crescendo found these claims to be false. This is not the photo of the victim of the Hathras gang rape.

The Claim on Social Media:

Twitter | Twitter | Facebook | Facebook

FACT CHECK

To establish the identity of this girl in the viral photo, we searched through various social media posts. We came across some Facebook posts which claimed that the viral photo is not of the Hathras victim. 

A user named Vipin Tiwari mentioned in his Facebook post that this girl is the sister of his friend Ajay. Last year she passed away in a hospital in Chandigarh. 

Taking a clue from it, we found the Facebook profile of Ajay Jeetu Yadav. He shared a post on 29th September dispelling the false information about the viral photo. 

“The photo shared in connection with the Hathras case is actually my sister. She had died in a hospital in Chandigarh due to the negligence of doctors. We ran a social media campaign for justice when police refused to register FIR against the hospital. The case is still going on in Chandigarh. I request all to not share my sister’s photo as the victim of Harhras gang rape,” Ajay wrote in the caption clarifying the misidentification of his sister’s photo. 

Original post – Facebook | Archive

We searched through Ajay Jeetu Yadav’s account and found several posts related to his diseased sister case.

According to media reports available from the time, his sister was admitted to a hospital in Chandigarh when she was suffering with severe pain in the stomach in July 2018. She went through surgery. She died three days after the surgery. 

Original Post – Facebook 

Her family alleged negligence on the part of the doctors and blamed them for her death. They even arranged a sit-in protest against the hospital.

Many friends and relatives of her shared the plight of her family on social media. They even alleged that the postmortem reports were tampered with.

Ajay Jeetu Yadav shared the images from the last rites of his sister on 24th July 2018. In this post, you can see the photo of her in a pink dress that has been doing rounds on social media after the alleged Hathras gang-rape incident.

Original post – Facebook | Archive

We have contacted Ajay Jeetu Yadav for more information and will update this article further once we have received his reply.

Meanwhile, Aaj Tak had contacted the Hathras victim’s brother who repudiated the viral claims clarifying that the girl in the image is not his sister.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that the photo of a different and unrelated girl from Chandigarh who died back in 2018 is being passed off as the victim of the Hathras gang rape.