A photo of a person, seemingly in police custody, was recently shared on social media with some users claiming that he was Pramod Rathore, a resident of Haryana, who was arrested in Japan for molesting a girl. However, the PTI Fact Check Desk found in its investigation that the man in the photo was a Pakistani national named Afzal Muhammad. He was arrested in September 2024 for allegedly sexually assaulting a female high school student on a local train in Japan. The photo was shared on social media with a false claim.
Claim:
An X (formerly Twitter) user on January 20, a post allegedly containing an image of an Indian man named Pramod Rathore who was arrested for molesting a high-school girl in Japan.
Here is a link and an archive link to the post, and below is the screenshot of the same.
Investigation:
The Desk conducted a customised keyword search on Google to check whetherany Indian national was arrested in Japan in the recent times. However, no credible report was found, reporting any such development.
In the next part of investigation, the Desk ran the photo of the accused through Google Lens and found a report published by a media portal named Hindu Post on September 16, 2024.
The feature image of the report was the same as the one shared on social media recently. However, the report identified the person as a Pakistani national, who was arrested for molesting a high school girl in train.
Here is the link to the report, and below is a screenshot of the same.
Further, the search result also led the Desk to a report by MSN, which also confirmed the accused to be a Pakistani national – 31-year-old Afzal Muhammad.
Here is the link to the report, and below is a screenshot of the same.
According to the report, the accused forced the victim off the train at the last stop, took her into the bushes near the station and sexually assaulted her.
Subsequently, the Desk concluded that the person in the viral photo was a Pakistani national, and not a Haryana-based individual.
Conclusion: A photo circulated on social media claimed to show an Indian man named Pramod Rathore, arrested for molesting a girl in Japan. The claim was found to be false. The person seen in the image was not an Indian, but a Pakistani national named Afzal Muhammad, who was arrested for sexually assaulting a high schoolgirl.
(The fact-check article was originally published by PTI Fact Check and has been republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of Shakti Collective.)
