Owner of camel whose leg was chopped off in Sindh’s Sanghar has not been killed

The iVerify Pakistan team has reviewed this content and determined that it is false.

To reach this conclusion, the iVerify Pakistan team investigated the claim by checking different news stories using relevant keywords to corroborate the claim.

Multiple posts and a video have been circulating on social media since June 18 claiming that it shows the owner of a camel, whose leg was chopped off in Sanghar by a feudal lord, being shot dead after the story went viral. However, the video is from a separate unrelated incident in Punjab’s Hafizabad area.

In Mund Jamrao village of Sanghar district, a landlord had brutally chopped off a camel’s leg on June 14, 2023, as punishment for foraging into his field, leading to widespread outrage after the incident circulated on social media.

The poor peasant owner had refused to identify the perpetrator, prompting the police to lodge a case on behalf of the state against unknown persons. Six suspects were subsequently arrested and remanded in police custody, despite their initial resistance and attack on the arresting officers.

Meanwhile, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah had directed immediate medical attention for the mutilated camel which was brought to the Comprehensive Disaster Response Services animal shelter in Karachi.

HOW IT STARTED

On June 18, 2024, a graphic video was shared by an account on social media platform X, which appeared to be a pro-PTI account based on its past posts.

The graphic video showed a bloodied person lying on the ground being continuously shot by gunfire.

The caption read, “The camel’s owner was brutally killed in Billo Rani’s occupied Sindh. A message is being given to common Pakistanis that if they raise their voice for their rights, they will do the same to you. Thieves, robbers, eunuchs, and murderers have been imposed on the nation.”

The video was viewed more than 56,000 times on X.

Similar claims about the camel owner being killed were circulated here, here and here.

METHODOLOGY

A fact check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and the keen public interest involved in developments related to the mutilated camel whose plight raised significant attention and condemnation.

Comments on the post claimed that the owner was not dead and that the video was of a separate incident that happened in South Punjab where a man named Anwar Mallah was killed.

Furthermore, Indian factchecking outlet DFRAC had also conducted an investigation on the video but the claim was different. DFRAC said the claim it was investigating was that the video showed “a Pakistani Hindu brutally killed by radical Islamists in Sindh.”

Investigating this claim further through a keyword search in Urdu and English for “Anwar Mallah” and “South Punjab” yielded a June 17 story by Geo News Urdu titled “Hafizabad: 13 armed suspects shot at a person, shot on the body and made a video”.

The report said that 13 armed suspects killed Mallah by firing due to longstanding personal enmity in Hafizabad’s Chah Chora area. The report said they also made a video of them shooting the body and uploaded it on social media.

The same was reported by Aaj News and Daily Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Bol News reported on June 18 with a video on its YouTube channel that the Sindh police spokesperson declared the news as “fabricated” and that the owner was safe.

FACT-CHECK STATUS: FALSE

The claim that a video shows the owner of a camel, whose leg was chopped off by a feudal lord in Sanghar, being shot dead after the story went viral is false.

The viral video is of a separate and unrelated incident from Punjab’s Hafizabad where suspects shot a man due to personal enmity.

The Sindh police also derided the video as propaganda and said the owner was safely alive.