Social Media Posts Give False Communal Twist To MP Rape Accused

Several social media posts claimed that the name of the person convicted of raping a 4-year-old - whose sentence was recently reduced from a death sentence to life imprisonment by Madhya Pradesh High Court - is Mohammed Firoz.

BOOM found the claim made in these posts to be false; according to the judgement, the name of the rape convict is Ramsingh. Social media posts sharing the name of Mohammed Firoz falsely purports that the accused is Muslim, thus giving a communal spin.

Furthermore, the judgement changed the conviction from life imprisonment to 20 years of imprisonment, and not from death sentence to life imprisonment, as the posts claimed.

You can read the entire judgement here (click here to download):

Controversial Judgement By MP HC

Ramsingh, who has been incarcerated since 2007, had appealed against his conviction of life imprisonment to end his sentence by considering the 15 years of incarceration as time served for the crime, for which he plead not guilty.

MP HC's recent judgement on the matter created controversy, after it partly allowed the appeal by reducing the sentence from life sentence to 20 years of imprisonment by observing that the appellant was "kind enough to leave the prosecutrix (victim) alive".

Viral Communal Twist

Among those sharing the false claim were several prominent accounts, such as Panchjanya - mouthpiece of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (who has since deleted the tweet), and Sudarshan News' Santosh Chauhan and Ashish Vyas.

Click here, here and here to view archives of the above posts.

The same claim has also been widely shared on Facebook. Click here, here, here and here to view them.