An unrelated video from Mexico is viral falsely linking it to the recent case of an Indian woman caught shoplifting in the United States.
The fake video is being shared in the backdrop of another video showing the arrest of a female Indian tourist over an alleged shoplifting charge at a Target store in Illinois, US. In the video, the woman, identified as Jimisha Avlani (alias Anaya) is seen feigning innocence, pleading with the police and offering to pay for the stolen items worth nearly ₹1.1 lakh (~ $1,300).
The Claim
In the viral video a security guard exposes woman pretended to be pregnant by stuffing stolen clothes beneath her dress. The video is viral with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "Indian-origin Ananya Alwani brought shame to India in America. She stuffed clothes worth over one lakh rupees under her top. Ananya, alias Jimisha, had gone to America to meet her family members. CCTV footage showed employees spotting her, and she was chased and caught."
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What We Found:
1. Video From Mexico: A reverse image search on video keyframes showed the same incident reported by Mexican news outlets covering the incident. A May 1, 2025 video report in Zócalo, said the incident was from Plaza Patio in Saltillo, Coahuila in Mexico, and that the woman was arrested for shoplifting.
Another outlet Excelsior reported that the incident was recorded on April 29, 2025.
2. Viral Video Does Not Match US Shoplifting Case
BOOM found that the US incident while recorded on May 1, 2025, was first posted by a YouTube channel BodyCam Edition on July 14, 2025 with most news reports crediting the channel as the source. In the 18-minute video, a woman wearing a blue shirt with white pants is being questioned in an office. This does not match the false video, where the woman is wearing a dress and caught in broad daylight on a pavement.
At the 5:26 timestamp, the woman can be stating her name as Anaya, later upon questioning, clarifying that her documents record it as Jimisha Avlani. The woman also adds that she is a tourist visiting from India and does not stay in the US.
Additionally, while the fake video shows a security guard nabbing the woman, in the original, uniformed officers of the Algonquin Police Department are involved in the questioning.
