Video of ‘Exorcism’ Falsely Shared as Forced Conversion of Hindu Minor in Pak
Pir Muhammedullah has been arrested twice for electrocuting children under the guise of exorcising 'demons'.
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A viral video showing a man conversing with a minor girl, before electrocuting her with small shocks in the presence of another man is being widely shared on social media, to claim that it shows a Muslim man in Pakistan forcefully converting a Hindu child to Islam.
However, we found that the video is not related to religious conversion. As per reports, the video shows a man identified as Muhammadullah, a fake faith healer who was arrested for using electric shocks on children under the guise of exorcising ‘jinns’ from them. Muhammadullah was arrested by Peshawar Police in 2020 and 2021 for the same.
CLAIM
The video is being shared with the following text that claims:
“A small Hindu child in Pakistan, forcefully kidnapped and being given electric shock to convert. This is how they converted 20 percent of Bharat.”
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
While looking for information on the video, we came across an article by Pakistani fact-checking organisation Soch Fact Check, which carried photos of the same claim.
The beginning of this article discussed the contents of the 40-second video, which showed a minor girl crying as “a man (posing as a faith healer) asks her how many jinns have possessed” her, to which she responds in Pashto after which he electrocutes her.
Taking a cue from here, we used keywords on Google to look for reports and were led to an article by Dunya TV dated 10 August 2020, which noted that a fake ‘pir’ (faith healer) called Muhammadullah was arrested in Peshawar for electrocuting children.
The article noted that the man carried out exorcisms.
(Source: DunyaTV/Screenshot)
The article carried a tweet published on 9 August 2020 by Peshawar Police’s verified Twitter account. The tweets rough translation noted that the ‘fake pir’ was arrested for electrocution in Peshawar’s Achini Bala after a video of him went viral on social media. The tweet also identified him as “Pir Muhammadullah, son of Qudratullah”.
The police noted Muhammedullah's arrest following a viral video.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
We looked up the man’s name and came across a report by The News, a Pakistani news portal. This article noted that as per officials, Muhammadullah was arrested during a raid after a video of him electrocuting a boy went viral.
Adding the word ‘arrest’ to the man’s name in Urdu led us to a The Independent Urdu report dated 27 April 2021.
As per the report, the police went looking for him after receiving complaints and found that he was electrocuting people and extorting people again.
We then looked for Muhammedullah’s social media profiles and found videos of him carrying out similar activities, published on 29 March. His Facebook page also carries videos of him performing rituals.
Muhammadullah uploaded videos of him performing rituals on YouTube.
He also uploads videos showing similar activities on his Facebook page.
Clearly, the video does not show a Muslim man forcefully converting a Hindu girl to Islam. The clip shows a fake faith healer electrocuting a minor in order to “exorcise” her and was later arrested by the Peshawar police for torturing children.
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