An Indian man made headlines for wagering his wife, losing the bet and his better half in the process. Ravinder Singh from Govindnagar in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh supposedly wagered his wife, news reports claimed, while betting on an Indian Premier League cricket match, an illegal exercise in and of itself.
As a serial gambler, he had earlier lost all his wife’s valuables and had almost put his house at stake, a leading newspaper said, quoting a senior police officer, "The case is really shocking. We have received the complaint from the woman and have registered an FIR against her husband. We are now looking into the allegations made by her and investigations are on to understand the exact circumstances behind the crime," the cop reportedly told the newspaper.
The news went viral in no time with prominent news channels flashing the story as 'breaking news' and many other websites belonging to popular media houses picking up the story.
The only problem is none of it is true. When Sputnik contacted Govindnagar police station to confirm the news, a senior police official, Ajay Prakash Shrivastava, said, "No one […] had contacted me regarding the incident. The report that Ravinder had gambled his wife is fabricated. His wife Jasmeet Kaur has filed a complaint that her husband is a serial gambler and now wants to put their house at stake. Her complaint was regarding this issue."
The smidgen of truth that may have given birth to the hoax reports lies in the fact that Ravinder's friends had started harassing his wife for the money he owed them.
Nevertheless, the hoary hoax, flashing through Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms showed how they bought into the idea and shared it widely.
Man loses wife as stake in #IPL gamblinghttps://t.co/3GogtIh9uM
— Dibang (@dibang) 28 мая 2016 г.
Man loses wife as stake in #IPL gamblinghttps://t.co/3GogtIh9uM
— Dibang (@dibang) 28 мая 2016 г.
Mahabharat Again?Man Loses His Wife 2 Gambling After Staking Her In IPL Betting!Man in Kanpur’s Govind area put his wife at stake & lost.!!
— Navneet yadav (@Nannumnis) 30 мая 2016 г.
Meanwhile, another immensely popular news story that Sputnik found to be untrue was that of a boy who was found in India's Rajasthan, two years after he went missing in Pakistan.
The story has been trending on social media for the last couple of days.
Mahabharata dice game in #Kanpur; man loses wife in #IPL bettinghttps://t.co/V1YtK4pUwv pic.twitter.com/gGZu4EueWO
— India Samvad (@india_samvad) 29 мая 2016 г.
Man loses wife at stake in IPL gambling https://t.co/Vu7xv0DSed
— Times of India (@timesofindia) 28 мая 2016 г.
(Representative Image) pic.twitter.com/n2gerxvcyH
Can both Pakistani and Indian Govt's work on this together to reunite Tufail with his parents? https://t.co/O24Q9DbniH
— Sharmila faruqi (@sharmilafaruqi) 29 мая 2016 г.
Mahabharat Again?Man Loses His Wife 2 Gambling After Staking Her In IPL Betting!Man in Kanpur’s Govind area put his wife at stake & lost.!!
— Navneet yadav (@Nannumnis) 30 мая 2016 г.
Missing Pakistani boy found in #India 2years later. Help of PMs sought fr reunification. @narendramodi @SushmaSwaraj https://t.co/f7ky8IWiN0
— Arshad Mahmood (@amahmood72) 30 мая 2016 г.
A flurry of news reports claimed that the family of 7-year-old Tufail Ismail came to know that he was in Rajasthan when his maternal uncle in Saudi Arabia saw a picture on social media shared by an Indian social worker.
Ismail's parents appealed to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to help in recovering their son and reuniting him with the family, a report published on the website of a popular news channel said. However, Superintendent of Rajasthan Police Rahul Katakey told Sputnik, "There is no such child. These are all rumors. The media has spread the rumors… there is no such child in our possession."
The Indian media seem to have picked up the story from Pakistani media outlet the Dawn, which first published the article.
These incidents point to an alarming trend where first, a rumor spreads on social media feeding into a self-propagating system that multiplies itself like amoeba and becomes a 'trendsetter.'
