A video showing a group of women beating a man up has gone viral on the internet.
The claim: The video has been share to claim that "Hindu women in Kerala beat up a Muslim man for misbehaving". Some posts also praised the women for the act.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)
The truth: While the video is from Kerala, the incident wasn't communal in nature.
The women belonged to the Christian community and were members of the Emperor Emmanuel Church, based in Irinjalakuda of the Thrissur district in Kerala.
The man was assaulted for allegedly morphing a woman's photograph and circulating it. He had recently cut his ties with the Church.
How did we find that out: We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image on some of the keyframes.
While going through the results, we came across news reports that carried screenshots from the viral video.
A report in OnManorama, published on 7 January, said 11 women were arrested for assaulting a man in Kerala's Thrissur district.
The report said that the women belonged to the Emperor Emmanuel Church and the man had recently cut ties with the church. The women accused the man, identified as Shaji, of morphing and circulating pictures of women from the Church.
We didn't find any reports of the man belonging to the Muslim community.
A link to the article can be found here.
(Source: OnManorama/Screenshot)
Police dismisses the claims:
We reached out to Aloor police station and a senior office dismissed the viral claim.
The officer confirmed said that the man and the women belonged to a cult of Christian community.
He added that the women were reprimanded for assaulting the man but were latest released.
Church confirms the reports:
We got in touch with Leslie Pereira, a member of Emperor Emmanuel Church in Muriyad, who confirmed that Shaji was an ex-member of the Church and had cut ties with it.
Shaji was a member of our Church but cut ties with us to join the Catholic church. He has morphed the photograph of a woman on to a nude photograph and circulated it. On the day of the incident, he was confronted by two members of the Church and he used foul language with them. Following the interaction, other members of the Church gathered and beat him up.Leslie Pereira, member of Emperor Emmanuel Church
He also dismissed the viral claim that people in the video were from different communities.
Conclusion: A video showing women beating a man up in Kerala has gone viral with a false communal claim.
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