Fact-Check: Bihar Man's Murder Confession Shared With False 'Love-Jihad' Angle

The police told The Quint that both the alleged accused and victim are Muslim.

Fact-check: There is no 'love-jihad' angle involved in the story of Mahbub Alam killing his wife, as claimed.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a reporter asking a few questions to a man from Bihar is going viral on social media.

In the video, the man is seen confessing about allegedly killing his wife as 'sacrifice' for Islam religion. It ends with photos of several women to claim that all of them were 'victims of love jihad’.

Several people are sharing this video by adding a 'love-jihad' angle to it and stating that his wife was killed because she belonged to the Hindu community.

An archive can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: We spoke to the Bihar police who dismissed any communal angle to the story and clarified that the alleged accused and the victim, both belonged to the Muslim community.

How did we find out the truth?: On performing reverse image search of some of the keyframes of the video and we found out a longer version of the same interview on YouTube.

• The video was uploaded by 'Insaan 24 News Live' channel on 28 April 2023.

• The man in the video identified himself as Mahbub Alam from the Bangra village from Bihar's Samastipur district.

• In this interview, he expressed how he killed his wife 'in the name of Khuda'.

• In this video, he did not mention anything about his wife's religion.

• The reporter asks about Alam's mental state to a police personnel at the 4:59 mark, however, he refrains from commenting on the issue.

Police's statement about Alam's crime: We reached out to Avinash Kumar, the investigating officer (IO) in this case from Bangra police station

• He clarified that the communal angle added to the viral video is false.

• “Mahbub Alam (25) killed his wife, Yasmeen Khatun (22), who was also a Muslim. Alam was arrested on 14 April after that," added Kumar.

• We also received First Information Report about the case which was filed against Alam and his family members by Khatun's father for allegedly murdering Khatun on 14 April 2023.

• It stated that Alam had married Khatun seven months ago in a proper Muslim ceremony.

• However, no medical records of Alam's mental health condition were shared by the police.

FIR copy of Alam's case.

(Source: FIR/Screenshot)

Conclusion: Clearly, there is no 'love-jihad' angle involved in the story as claimed.

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