Fact Check: News of father marrying his daughter in Bengal is of 2007, shared with misleading claim

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A screenshot of a news item published in a Hindi newspaper is going viral on social media with claims that a Muslim father in West Bengal married his daughter and impregnated her. Vishvas News investigation found this claim to be misleading. The viral post claims that the news is of a recent incident but in Vishvas News investigation, it was found that the news is of an incident that happened in 2007 in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri.

Claim:

Social media user ‘Yeh Sadi Hindutva Ka Hai’ shared the viral post (archive link) and wrote, “#West_Bengal Jihadi Afzuddin Ali married his real #daughter, daughter pregnant, daughter’s real mother told Nikah as Allah’s order. The angry villagers thrashed the father fiercely. and handed over to the police. The Muslim Personal Law Board also jumped in to save the Jihadi”.

Several other users on different social media platforms have shared screenshots of this news with identical and similar claims.

Investigation:

While investigating the viral post, the Vishvas News team found a news report by the news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) on Webdunia.com. The report which was published on November 20, 2007, mentioned the incident.

“A case of a father marrying his teenage daughter has come to light in Kashiajhora village of Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal. His daughter is currently pregnant. The father says that he has received the instruction of God to do so. This came to light yesterday when the villagers found the girl five months pregnant. According to the police, till that time the villagers were not aware of the marriage of the girl. Angered by the incident, the neighbors went to Afizuddin Ali (37), the girl’s father. Ali said he married his elder daughter six months ago,” the PTI report on Webdunia.com stated.

“According to Ali, for this he received instructions from God in a dream. Ali works as a daily wage laborer and has five children,” the report further stated.

Further searching the context, we found another report published on the Times of India website dated November 20, 2007, which mentioned this incident and the image used in this report is similar to the screenshot of the viral post.

“Considering the tense situation in the village after the matter came to light, the officials of Bannerhat police station arrested Ali, his wife and 15-year-old daughter and took them to the SDO court. However, the magistrate had to release him as it was a case outside criminal jurisdiction,” the Times Of India report stated.

Vishvas News team’s investigation found that the viral post is related to an old incident of 2007 (see another report), which is being shared with a misleading claim that it is of a recent incident. For additional confirmation, we contacted Dainik Jagran’s Siliguri Editor Gopal Ojha, who confirmed that this is an incident of 2007 and goes viral on social media from time to time.

The user who shared the viral post with the misleading claim is followed by close to 10,000 people on Facebook.