Video Of Missing Child Viral With False Claims

An old video from Delhi, of an appeal to reunite a missing child with her family is viral with the false claim that the girl was found in Mangalore with a group of beggars. BOOM found that the video is from November 2020 and the child has already been reunited with her family after she was found to be lost by members of a local gurudwara.

BOOM was able to identify the location as Jaitpur Gurudwara in New Delhi and the incident to be from November 2020. Gurudwara members confirmed that the girl was handed over to her family, the same day as the video was shot.

The clip was shared by Bollywood actress Divya Dutta with the caption, "This little girl was found with a bunch of beggars in Mangalore, S. India. She calls herself Sonal Bipin Patel. The beggars claim that she was found in a train coming from Mumbai. Please forward this as much as possible. Perhaps, she can be united with her parents."

Viral on Facebook

On searching with the same caption on Facebook, we found that the viral clip is being shared with the misleading claim.

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FACT-CHECK

We found that the text - 'a child is found in Mangalore with a group of beggars' was similar to another false claim from 2018, of a missing child. The old claim also identified the missing girl as a Sonal Bipin Patel, claiming she had been kidnapped and found with beggars. This showed that the text is unrelated to the viral clip.

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A search with the keywords, 'Gurudwara, Missing child found' showed uploads from November 2020. None of the social media posts identified the girl with her name.

Additionally, we found a post on Facebook from November 2020, saying the girl was found in Jaitpur area in Badarpur, New Delhi.

We then contacted Jaitpur gurudwara in Jaitpur, New Delhi who confirmed that the clip was from November 2020 and shot in their premises.

A member said that the girl was seen lost near the gurudwara and had been brought inside for safety and then a video appeal shot to help trace her family. Sandeep Singh Rai, part of the gurudwara's social media team said, "This video is from November 2020, and the girl was reunited with her parents on the same day we shot the video."

He added that in the video, the person making the appeal to help trace the child's parents is Harjeet Singh. "She (the girl) was crying when we found her and was also lost. So we had made a video clip and posted it on groups so her parents could see it, identify her and come pick her up," Rai said.

Rai sent us a clip of him and Singh who had made an appeal at the Gurudwara at that time in the viral video. Singh narrates regarding the incident stating that the girl was handed to her parents after checking their id and requests people not to share the viral video now as the child was reunited with her parents on the same day back in November 2020.