A photo of a woman wrapped in plastic and fit in a suitcase is being shared with a false communal claim that she was killed by a Muslim man.
BOOM found that the victim was a Aayushi Chaudhary murdered by her parents, Nitesh and Brijbala Yadav in what is reported to be a case of honour killing
The posts are being shared with the communal spin after the grisly murder of a Shraddha Walkar allegedly by her partner Aaftab Poonawala in Delhi. Poonawala allegedly cut up Walkar's body into several pieces before disposing them off in the Mehruali forest.
Sushil Singh, a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Uttar Pradesh also shared photos of the woman's body in a red suitcase with text in Hindi that translates to, "How many Aftabs will the police catch from each district, every day #Aftab is coming out. Everyday, sometimes in suitcase and sometimes in fridge, the dead body of sisters is coming out. Hey wake up enough is enough, #Abdul is roaming in every street to erase you. Location - Mathura Yamuna Express"
(Original text in Hindi - पुलिस कितने आफताब पकड़ेगी हर जिले से,हर दिन #आफताब निकल रहा। रोज कभी सूटकेस तो कभी फ्रीज से बहनों का शव निकल रहा। अरे जाग जाओ अब बहुत हुआ, तुम्हें मिटाने के लिए हर गली में #अब्दुल घूम रहा। लोकेशन -मथुरा यमुना एक्सप्रेस)
View post here
The photos with the same false communal claim is viral on Twitter and was shared by Aanchal Yadav a journalist with Hindi Khabar and formerly with Sudarshan News.
FACT CHECK
We first ran a reverse image search using the keywords Mathura Yamuna Expressway and found a tweet by a journalist with Times of India, Arvind Chauhan who had posted the same photos on November 18, 2022.
Chauhan in a series of tweets over the next few days posted updates about the woman who was earlier unidentified. He added that the body was identified as 21-year-old Ayushi by her mother and brother.
He also tweeted that the police had after investigation arrested the girl's father for allegedly shooting her dead.
Using the above information, we ran a search for Ayushi Murder Mathura and found several news reports about the case.
According to an NDTV report, the girl's father Nitesh, was "furious she had gone out for some days without informing him" and shot her dead once she returned home. The report further added, "According to the police, Aayushi had married a man named Chhatrapal, from another caste, without telling her family. Her parents were angry at what they believed was her defiance and 'stubborn' attitude."
We then contacted Martand Prakash Singh, Superitendent of Police, Mathura who denied any communal angle to the incident. MP Singh said, "The woman's parents - Nitesh and Brijbala have murdered her. There is no communal angle to the incident as being claimed on social media."
When asked about whether she was in a relationship with a Muslim man, Singh denied the same and said, "She had married a Kshatrapal Gurjar, without her parents consent who were against her being with a man from another caste. This was the reason the parents were angry at the victim and it led to her killing."
We then found a video statement posted by the Mathura police on their official Twitter account where SP Singh can be seen speaking to mediapersons. In the video, Singh details the case and says that the woman was murdered by her parents for marrying outside of her caste.