The true story behind social media posts claiming that a group of young men molested a girl on a beach in Sri Lanka!

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There are many instances where events reported in other countries some time ago are being misreported by posting various social media posts, making it seem as if they were recently reported in Sri Lanka. This is an examination of a post that has been released on social media.

Social Media Posts:

A viral post with a few photos appears to show several boys sexually abusing a girl. The post caption translated to English said: “A video of a 14-year-old girl being molested in broad daylight by eight men on a beach, tearing her clothes, and raping her is going viral on the internet.” 

The original post had been published on the 16^th of April, and the text of the post states the unfortunate incident that happened yesterday, implying it to be the 15^th of April 2026. The text goes on to say that a 14-year-old girl who had attended a tutoring class and had gone to the beach with her boyfriend was sexually abused. It also states that no one came to her rescue at that time and that someone on the beach had recorded the incident on video. 

The original post does not mention which beach this incident occurred on. The source of this story is mentioned as BBC News, although the link to more information shows a blogspot link.

The way the information is presented, it appears to be an incident that happened in Sri Lanka, during the Awurudu holidays.

Facebook | Archived Link  Facebook | Archived Link

We took the following steps to verify the authenticity of this post circulating on Facebook.

Fact Check:

Since BBC News has been mentioned as a source in this article and Hiru TV has been mentioned, we first checked through the mainstream media to see if such an incident had been reported. However, no such news had been reported in the aforementioned media outlets or in any other mainstream media outlets recently.

We further contacted the Police Media Division to confirm and provide further information on this. They confirmed that no such incident has been reported from Sri Lanka recently.

However, when checking the link provided in this post, it leads to another blogspot web page, which states that the incident took place in Bihar, India, without specifying the year or further details. It also appears to be a phishing or malware-related site.

To verify the authenticity of the information here, we took steps to check the photos through a Reverse Image search.

An incident reported from the state of Bihar, India, in 2018

Via a reverse image search, we confirmed that the image was from an incident reported from the Indian state of Bihar in April 2018 and not from the recent Awurudu season in Sri Lanka.

In 2018, Indian and international media reported that a bystander had recorded a video of a 14-year-old girl being forcibly stripped and torn by eight youths in Jehanabad, Bihar.

The Daily Mail website had reported this along with the video related to this incident, stating that 8 youths had torn off a girl’s clothes in public in the afternoon and sexually assaulted her. The website further stated that the girl tried to escape from the clutches of the group, and no one came to her rescue and that 6 suspects related to this incident had been arrested later.

dailymail.co.uk| Archived Link

This incident, which was reported from the state of Bihar in India, was reported by Indian and other media in 2018, as seen on here, to here, this location, and this location.

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Conclusion:

Our investigation shows that the incident related to the post titled “A video of a 14-year-old girl being molested in broad daylight – a video of eight men tearing off a girl’s clothes on a beach is causing a stir on the internet” is neither an incident from Sri Lanka nor a recent one. The post uses several images extracted from a video related to an incident reported from the Indian state of Bihar in April 2018, and makes it appear as if it were a recent incident reported from Sri Lanka.