The viral video that showed a young girl offering her lollipop to a robber is not real, The Current has confirmed through a deep dive of the internet using different frames, from what was claimed to be CCTV footage.

 

As per the details, the video that started doing rounds in WhatsApp groups on Sunday evening went on to garner tens of millions of views as it was reshared and aired by leading mainstream media outlets.

 

The undated video, with fake timestamps among other digital prints, to make it look more like CCTV footage, showed a robber entering a store located at an undisclosed location. He was then seen assaulting the shopkeeper, forcing him to pay up at gunpoint.

 

As the robber was about to leave, the video showed a young girl, claimed to be the shopkeeper’s minor daughter, offering the masked man her lollipop. Seeing this, the robber returned the shopkeeper’s valuables, patting the girl on her head and leaving the store empty-handed.

 

With the video going viral on social media, netizens were left divided over its authenticity. While a few said it seemed scripted, hundreds of thousands of others praised the “kind-heartedness” of the robber, whom, social media users said “seemed to have been forced into a life of crime”.

 

Amid conflicting claims, The Current reverse-searched the purported CCTV footage using different frames and uncovered that the video was, in fact, fake.

 

As per the details of The Current’s findings, the video was produced by a YouTube channel named Kamran Team Official, which has over 80,000 subscribers. The channel has at least 172 videos, most of which are scripted or edited CCTV videos ranging from humour to social messaging.

 

While most videos on the channel have hundreds of thousands of views, some have garnered views upwards of a whopping five million.

 

Taking a detailed look at the channel’s content, The Current also discovered that the store from the robbery video had repeatedly been featured in various videos, and so were the actors, as well as the toy gun.

 

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