Old Unrelated Video of Abduction of a Girl from Egypt Shared With Communal False Claim

A video showing two girls being kidnapped by two men in a lift is going viral on social media. Sharing the video, users are claiming that the video is from Bangalore, Karnataka, where ‘Jihadis are kidnapping Hindu girls’. The video was forwarded to our 24*7 Factline number 9049053770 with a caption, “*Karnataka, Bangalore – See how Jihadis are kidnapping Hindu girls in the lift by making them smell chloroform. They make the girls unconscious in the lift and put them straight in the car parked in the car parking and leave. The girls and women who are kidnapped are never traced!!”

https://archive.org/details/1032214554867495

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The video was shared on Facebook, too, with the same claim.

https://archive.org/details/girls-kidnapped-fb-claim

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However, as we investigated, we came to know that the video is old and from Egypt. Here’s the fact check.

Fact Check

We started our investigation by taking some screenshots from the viral video and conducting a reverse image search. As a result, we found an image similar to a screenshot of the viral video attached to a report published on the website “Radar Al Arab” on 21 December 2023. The report was in the Arabic language. The translation of the headline read, “The Egyptian Interior Ministry reveals a surprise about the video of “the two girls being drugged and kidnapped in the elevator”. The report read, “After social media activists circulated a video of two girls being drugged inside an elevator in Egypt and kidnapped by two adult men, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior published exciting details about the video that caused terror among the residents. The Ministry of Interior issued a statement on Wednesday evening, revealing that the man appearing in the video is the girls’ father and that he is separated from their mother, who reported the kidnapping. The Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed that the man left the country with one of his daughters of her own free will…”

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The report stated that the incident took place on 13 December 2023.

The same report was found on the website “The Egyptian Centre For Women’s Rights“

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An Instagram handle, “megazettes”, shared a clip similar to the viral video and wrote, “As a video showing the abduction of two girls in Nasr City went viral online, the Ministry of Interior announced the arrest of the two suspects involved in aiding the father to kidnap his daughters. The video shows the father with one of the suspects, while the other was driving their car. As it turns out, the father had left the country with his daughter “willingly” via Cairo International Airport on the same date as the incident. The incident was reported on December 13, 2023, by the mother at Nasr City Police Station”.

Another report on this incident can be read here.

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From this, it’s clear that the viral video is old and from Egypt. This has no link with Bangalore, Karnataka.

Conclusion

From our investigation, we can say that the claim made with the viral video is false. The video does not show ‘Jihadis’ kidnapping two Hindu girls in the lift in Bangalore. The video is old and from Egypt where a father kidnapped his daughter due to a family dispute.