Amid the ongoing diplomatic row between India and the Maldives, a photo is being widely shared on social media purportedly showing the body of a woman wrapped in plastic.
The photo is shared with the claim that a girl who went to the Maldives for travel was raped and murdered.
“A girl who went on a trip to the #Maldives was found dead naked near the seashore. She was gang-raped and tortured before being killed! (sic)” wrote an X user who shared the photo.
SouthCheck found that the image doesn’t show the body of a dead woman.
On doing a Google Reverse Image search, we found that the same image was published by a website, Big World Tale, on August 19, 2022. The article associated with the image read that the beachgoers panicked and called the police when a sex doll washed up the shore, thinking that a woman was murdered.
The incident occurred at a beach in the Bang Saen district of Chonburi, eastern Thailand.
The New York Post also reported the incident on August 22, 2022. The report stated that the so-called stiff was a hyperrealistic sex doll. The sex-cessory, allegedly a Japanese model known as the “AV Idol,” costs around $553.
DailyMail UK had also reported the incident.
Hence, we can ascertain that the viral image is shared with a misleading claim.
