Fact Check: Police has not issued any advisory regarding providing help on streets, viral post is fake

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A post is being shared on social media with the claim that all the police stations have issued a notice for the citizens. It is being claimed in the post – “Police said that if any child comes to you and asks for your help with paper in hand and says please drop me at this written address then don’t help him. By helping them you may be a victim of an accident”. Vishvas News in its investigation found that this claim is false. No such advisory has been issued by the police.

Claim :

Facebook user “Nava Kumar” shared the post on July 12, which reads (English Translation), “URGENT NOTICE..From all police stations to all citizens. There are children in the streets now carrying a paper with their home address written on it and claiming that they are lost. If you see these children, do not take them to the written address because people are waiting for you there to kill you, steal your organs, or rape, so we ask you to take them to the nearest police station or the nearest emergency patrol and immediately report them. Please circulate this. The matter is real, and we confirm that they hand them over to the nearest police station or the nearest patrol you find. Don’t try to be a hero or good Samaritan. Send it to all your contacts.Send this to all your WhatsApp groups.”

Police Officer

The archived version of this post can be seen here.

Investigation :

To investigate this post, we started searching through several keywords on Google. We did not find any information about such an announcement made by the police officials. We also could not find any credible media reports on this. Then we started scanning the social media handle of Delhi Police, there too we could not find any post related to it.

Taking the investigation further, we got in touch with Rakesh Singh, the crime reporter of Dainik Jagran. We shared the viral claim with him on WhatsApp. He told us the post is fake and said that no such announcement has been made.

We also contacted Delhi Police spokesperson DCP Suman Nalwa regarding the viral claim. He also called this post fake. Then we contacted Lucknow Police Commissioner DK Thakur regarding the viral claim. They told us that this advisory has not been issued by us.

Regarding this post, Saharanpur SSP Vipin Tada says that no such order has been issued by the police department.

The Punjab Bureau has also confirmed that no such advisory has been issued in Punjab. If it did, it would definitely be in the news.

However, all the police officers said that in such a situation, first of all you should inform the police.

At the end of the investigation, we did social scanning of the user who shared the fake message. In scanning, we came to know that the user is a resident of Midnapore, West Bengal. The user has 235 friends on Facebook.