Fact Check: Video of exorcism passed off as forced conversion of Hindu girl in Pakistan
India Today
A video of an exorcism was passed off as forced conversion of a Hindu girl in Pakistan.
Atrocities on minorities in Pakistan, particularly forced conversions of Hindu minor girls, have been reported widely inside and outside Pakistan.
Recently, a video of a girl being tortured by two men went viral with the claim that this was a Hindu girl being electrocuted to forcibly convert her to Islam.
Several Twitter and Facebook users shared the viral video with claims like, “Viral Video from Pakistan: How Muslims torture Hindu girls by giving electric shocks to forcibly convert them to Islam. This video is from KPK, Pakistan”.
The India Today Anti-Fake News War room (AFWA) found that this video does not show the forced conversion of a Hindu girl. It shows an exorcism ritual. The man seen torturing the girl is Haji Muhammad Ullah, a self-proclaimed exorcist from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan.
We found this video was also shared on Reddit, where several people claimed it did not capture forced conversion, rather it showed exorcism.
One Reddit user referred to the conversation in the viral video, which is in mixed Pashto language, and commented that the people in the video were talking about demons. Another Reddit user claimed the man in the video was a known Pakistani exorcist called Haji Muhammad Ullah.
Taking this as a clue, we looked up Haji Muhammad Ullah on social media. A self-proclaimed exorcist of Achini Meira area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, this man has a YouTube channel with over 80,000 subscribers.
