Photo Of Bhojpuri Singer Peddled As Osama Bin Laden's Son-In Law

Photos of popular Pakistani actress, Syra Yousuf are viral with a photo of an Indian Bhojpuri language singer with a false claim that she is slain terrorist Osama Bin Laden's daughter who renounced Islam after marrying a Hindu man from India.

The viral photos are in the form of a news clipping and claims that Yousuf is Laden's daughter named Zoya who is married to a Pradeep Maurya, a singer from Uttar Pradesh in India.

BOOM found out that the woman in the photo is a Pakistani actress Syra Yousuf and also confirmed with an acquaintance of Pradeep Maurya that the Bhojpuri singer is in no way connected to Laden's daughter or any member of his family.

The claim has been viral on Facebook and social media for the past few years with advocate Prashant Patel Umrao also having shared the image in 2014. Patel who has previously been called out on several occasions for peddling communally charged fake news, in his tweet said, "Osama Bin Laden's daughter Joya is going to marry Pradip Maurya, Bhojpuri Singer of UP."

Access an archive of the tweet here

We then searched for the same caption on Facebook and found post from Thursday and also some dating back to 2015.

The caption of the post reads: Is the news true that the daughter of the terrorist Bin Laden has accepted Hinduism? (क्या यह खबर सत्य है कि आतंकी लादेन की बेटी हिन्दू स्वीकार कर ली) and is accompanied by a undated and unidentified Hindi newspaper clipping with the headline saying, "The wedding of Osama bin Laden's daughter Zoya and singer Pradeep Maurya is next month." (Original text in Hindi : ओसामा बिनलादेन की बेटी जोया और सिंगर प्रदीप मौर्या की शादी अगले महीने )

The article which carries a photo of Yousuf with Maurya claims that the photo shows Zoya Bin Laden and Maurya and adds both of them got married at an Arya Samaj temple in Mumbai. The article goes on to state that Zoya abused Islam after converting to Hinduism and praised Hinduism by saying that it "treats women with respect." The clipping further details that Zoya is the eldest daughter of Bin Laden's first wife.

The archive of the post can be accessed here.

The same clipping was shared in 2014 making the same false claim.

The archive of the post can be accessed here.

The claim has also been shared without the photos.

The archive of the post can be accessed here.

BOOM received the claim on its WhatsApp tipline

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Fact Check

BOOM found that the photo used in the viral clipping is a popular Pakistani actress, Syra Yousuf and not Zoya. Yousuf is also not reported to have any family links to Bin Laden. We then reached out to an acquaintance of the Bhojpuri singer Pradeep Maurya who rubbished the claim, calling it fake news and said Maurya has not married any family member of Bin Laden.

The viral claim said that Zoya Bin Laden was the eldest daughter of Bin Laden's first wife. Using this we ran a search using Laden's first wife's name - Najma Ghanem and looked for any details about their children. While there were no credible news reports naming all of Najma and Laden's daughter we found that the couple had four daughter and seven sons.

Unverified lists available online do not mention that Ghanem and Laden had a daughter named Zoya. We also found no existing pictures online of any of his daughters.

BOOM found a Guardian article which details Bin Laden's family tree which has no mention of a daughter named Zoya. A 2002 CNN report claimed that Bin Laden had fathered close to 26 children but didnot names of any of them.

We then moved on to debunking the photos used in the clipping claiming it shows Zoya Bin Laden and a Bhojpuri language singer Pradeep Maurya.

"Zoya bin Laden"

A reverse image search on Yandex and Goggle of the photo of the woman in the post led us to several results that identified her as Syra Yousuf, a well known Pakistani model and actress.

We found that the photo used in the false claim is mirrored image of a photo that appeared in this profile of the actress. A further search for details about Yousuf's married life showed articles that said, she got married to fellow Pakistani actor Sahroz Sabzwari in 2012 and the couple announced their separation in February 2020 due to irreconcilable differences.

There are no news reports about the actress having converted to Hinduism or ever having been involved with a Bhojpuri language singer from India.

Pradeep Maurya

A reverse image search on the photo showed that it was a photo of Pradeep Maurya who is a Bhojpuri singer and actor. We found the same photo in a blogspot upload which identified Maurya as an actor and the owner of Gorakhpur Film City. Maurya is said to run Gorakhpur Film City, a local Uttar Pradesh based video production company with a Sandeep S Dwivedi who identifies himself as a business partner.

BOOM called the number listed in videos uploaded on Gorakhpur Film City's YouTube channel and got in touch with Dwivedi who rubbished the claim about Maurya being married to Bin Laden's daughter. Dwivedi said, "This is fake news. Pradeep is married but not to Osama's daughter."

Maurya did not respond to our calls. The story will be updated as and when Maurya responds.

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