Dhule Lynching: Sadly the video that led mob lynching and took 5 innocent lives was of dead Syrian children, claims report

Days ago, a crowd turned into a mad mob in Maharashtra's Dhule and killing 5 innocent men after the rumours on social media which suggested that a gang of child-lifters was active in the area. According to reports in NDTV, one of the videos that led a mob crazy enough to kill those five men to death was not from Maharashtra or even from India. The video that shows rows of children's bodies is not from India. The narrative in Hindi in the video said they were killed by gangs who wanted to harvest their organs. The video, however, was from Syria, it showed children who had died in a nerve gas attack five years ago.

Jency Jacob, the Managing Editor of Booblive.in, a website that had called out the video, said, "This hails from 2013 from a nerve gas attack that had happened in Syria. The bodies that you see are of Syrian children".

"At that point in time, we had also done the story because there was another video of child kidnapping from Pakistan which has now become quite famous. Both these videos were going together," he added.

The rumours over those fake videos have so far caused more than 20 deaths across the country, appear flawlessly professional. One of the men among a group of 7-8, tried to speak to a girl, after which the mob started beating to him suspecting a children lifter. Later, a crowd of 3000 had gathered from neighbouring villages, attacked them threw stones at them and thrashed them with sticks and chappals, and took the life of those innocent men, over-riding the requests of a section of locals to hand over the men to the police.

While 23 people have been arrested for the crime, the police are still clueless about the men responsible for circulating such fake videos. All arrested men ages between the 20s and 30s and have been sent into police custody.

The police say they are trying to trace who produced the locally made video. Unofficially, a police source said they are already actively monitoring WhatsApp to ensure fake news is tackled before it actually kills.