Teenage boy’s murder is being used to create communal tension between Hindus and Muslims.
Rating
Claim
A Hindu Boy – “Manoj Pandey” (15 yrs old) stabbed to death by Islamist jihadis in Patel Nagar for protesting against the molestation of his sister. “Mughal 2.0” in India🇮🇳
Explanation
A young teenager was killed in Delhi as he was stabbed on his back. A CCTV video of the murder had surfaced online and many are claiming that the teenager was murdered by Jihadis, when he protested the murder. Sudharshan News and its Editor-in-Chief Suresh Chavhanke had tweeted “When protested against molesting sister, 15-year-old youth Manoj Negi was murdered by stabbing him with knives. Nitesh Jat was also beaten to death by Jihadis near the same area a few days back.”
Incidentally, Nitesh Chaudhary, a Bajrang Dal member was murdered few days back in the same locality and the murderers in the case were reported as Muslims. Although Police had denied communal angle to the murder, Sudharshan News had declared that the murder was committed by Jihadis and also insinuated that the murder of the 15-year-old teenager was committed by Muslims, or in Sudharshan News’ words ‘jihadis’. Another popular right wing website, Hindu Post also reported in a similar fashion with an insinuation that the murderers in the case could be Muslims by listing out other cases where the perpetrators were allegedly Muslims.
Similarly, many social media users were claiming that the murderers of the teenager were Muslims and many even accused them of being Jihadis which can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.
What’s the truth?
A keyword search resulted various articles from several news outlets such as NDTV, Indian Express, The Hindu, Zee News etc.
From those news articles, we find that the victim is 15-year-old Manoj Kumar Negi and he was stabbed by two other juveniles who are around the same age as the victim. The juveniles were harassing Manoj’s sister and Manoj had warned them not to do so and allegedly slapped during the altercation. Few days after this dispute, Manoj had been stabbed while he was returning from the computer class. The news articles do not mention the names of the accused as they are minors. Hence, we couldn’t verify their religion from the news articles.
A reputed fact-checking site AltNews had accessed the FIR copy and had confirmed that the killers were also Hindus which can be seen here. All parties involved in the murder had been confirmed as Hindus by the DCP Shweta Chauhan.
(Image Source: AltNews. Names are hidden as the parties involved are minors.)
Conclusion
The murder of the teenager Manoj Kumar Negi was not committed by Muslims or Jihadis as maliciously claimed by the several social media users or as insinuated by some news outlets. All the parties involved in this murder (victims and the killers) were from the same community, Hindus.
