The alleged gangrape of a 28-year-old Spanish travel vlogger in Jharkhand’s Dumka in March has highlighted women’s and tourists’ safety concerns in India. Against the backdrop, a disturbing video showing men openly harassing a woman on a street is widely shared on social media, claiming that a foreign tourist is sexually harassed in India.
The video is shared on Facebook with a caption: “A foreign female tourist sexually harassed in #India. The men are seen touching and grabbing her as she is scared and protesting. It’s unbelievable how dangerous it is for women to travel in India”.
Here’s the link to the viral post.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above claim, and found it to be FALSE.
Running the video keyframes through Reverse Image Search, the NM team traced a longer version of the video uploaded on YouTube, dated September 23, 2022, with a title: “Guys harass Japanese female streamer! New Twitch moments.”
In this video, we noticed the words “Toho Cinemas Imax” written in the background. “Toho Cinemas” is a Japanese movie theatre company.
Searching for various Toho Cinemas Imax theatres on Google Maps, we found that the location seen in the viral video was from Tokyo’s Shinjuku city. A comparison between the clip and Google Street View can be seen below.
According to a report by Sportskeeda, dated August 22, 2021, the video shows Japanese Twitch streamer “Sushipotato” being harassed during a live stream. Sushipotato often roams around the streets of Japan while live streaming and interacting with strangers.
Thus, it is confirmed that a video showing a foreign tourist being assaulted on the street is from Japan and not India.
