Fact-Check: Video of Kidnapping in Egypt Falsely Peddled as Clip From Bengaluru

It shows an incident of a man kidnapping his daughters in Egypt on 13 December 2023 and is not from Bengaluru.

The video is from Egypt. It does not show an incident of kidnapping in Bengaluru.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing CCTV footage of two men entering an elevator to drug and kidnap two minors has gone viral on social media.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows an incident from Bengaluru, Karnataka, where two girls were abducted after being forced to inhale chloroform, a chemical compound which acts as a sedative when inhaled.

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video is from Egypt.

• It shows two girls being abducted by their father and one of the two accomplices from the mother's custody.

How did we find out?: We divided the video into keyframes using InVID, a video verification tool, and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

• This led us to a BBC report dated 21 December 2023, the translated version of which mentioned that the video showed "the drugging and kidnapping of two girls inside an elevator in Egypt."

The translated version of the report shows that the incident took place in Egypt.

(Source: BBC/Screenshot)

• It mentioned the the Egyptian Ministry of Interior had found that the father of the two girls had kidnapped them, with the aid of two other people.

• As per Sky News Arabia, the incident took place on 13 December in Nasr city, where the girls' mother filed a complaint against their father.

• It added that the couple had separated, and the girls were living with their father, an accountant, until 2022, after which the mother obtained their legal custody.

• The report also mentioned that the father had fled the country with one of his daughters after committing the crime.

Statement by the authorities: We came across a post and statement regarding the viral video on the Egyptian Ministry of Interior's verified Instagram account.

The Ministry of Interior published a detailed statement about the incident, including a  screenshot from the viral video.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

• According to the statement, the girls' father had two accomplices – one to help him abduct the girls and the other to drive the car – who had a financial agreement with the father in exchange for committing the crime.

• The post added that the accomplices had been arrested after legal action and the Prosecutor-General had taken over the case.

Conclusion: The video shows two girls being kidnapped by their father in Nasr City, Egypt.

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