Lighthouse Journalism came across a post being widely shared. A video was being shared with the claim that six NEET accused, hiding in Congress office in Jharkhand’s Deoghar, were arrested. During the investigation we found that the viral claim is misleading. The NEET case accused were not arrested from Congress office.
Claim:
Facebook user Vivek Singh shared the viral claim on his profile.
Check the archive version of the claim here.
Other users too are sharing the video with same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on the screengrab of the video.
We found the video posted on ANI’s X handle.
The caption said that the six accused in connection with UGC NEET case being taken from LNJP hospital, Patna. Bihar police arrested the accused from Jharkhan’s Deoghar.
The video seen along with the viral claim is from LNJP hospital. When searched on Google maps, the pictures uploaded revealed that the place was similar as seen in the video, confirming that the video was from LNJP hospital, Patna and not the Congress office.
We then checked for news reports to confirm the location from which the accused were arrested.
We found a report on India Today, mentioned that the arrests were made from a house near AIIMS, Deoghar.
Another report on Times of India mentioned, Deoghar SDPO Hritik Srivastava said the suspects had been hiding allegedly in the house of one Jhunu Singh in Devipur locality ever since Bihar Police exposed the widespread cheating on May 5.
Conclusion: Six accused in NEET case were arrested from a house that belonged to one Jhunu Singh in Deoghar. Accused were not arrested from the Congress office. Viral claims are misleading.
