Police Have Not Issued A Warning About A Wave Of Organized Crime, Carried Out Using Young Children!

Police and Security Forces issue warnings and advisory messages to the public in order to be vigilant about organized gangs engaged in various fraudulent activities. However, fabricated messages also get shared among social media users as official warnings by the Police. While it's always important to keep a vigil about any suspicious activities, such made-up stories can create unnecessary panic in society.

This is an investigation of recurring fake social media posts which had falsely attributed a fictitious warning notice to Sri Lanka police about an organized criminal activity that is said to be carried out using young children.

Social Media Posts

Facebook posts were exchanged about a criminal process using children as follows. The purported message attributed to a Ministry of Internal Affairs said that young children were disguised as lost or stranded and were used to lure unsuspecting adults to the location where the criminals were waiting to kill the victim, steal their belongings, organs etc. The full message can be seen below.

These messages are getting shared in many parts of the world, and below is an instance of these claims going viral in Sinhala among WhatsApp users in Sri Lanka.

Fact Check

First, we inquired whether the mainstream media published any such news. However, we did not come across any such recent report.

We also noticed that social media posts conveying this meaning appeared in English in several regions, including India and African countries. Below is one such post published in March 2022.

Facebook | FB|FB2

Has the Sri Lanka Police ever announced a warning about the kind of criminal activities mentioned in these social media posts?

We inquired about this from the Police Media Spokesperson, Nihal Talduwa. He said that the Sri Lanka Police had never issued such an announcement, and no information about such a mafia gang had been revealed. The Police Media Division, which gives press releases on such matters, also confirmed that they had not issued a press release about such criminal procedure.

Also, there is no ministry in Sri Lanka known as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as shown in this social media post.

We also noticed that for these viral messages, a number of fact-checks had been published in various countries, concluding the message to be a fabricated hoax.

Here is our Sinhala language fact check on the same viral claims from 2022.

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Conclusion

During our inquiries, it was confirmed that the Sri Lankan Police had not issued any warning about this type of organized criminal act using children to prey on adult victims, as mentioned on social media as confirmed by the Police Media Spokesman. These are part of hoax messages which were getting shared in many parts of the world.

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