A screenshot claiming a Christian couple in Kerala refused an ambulance service, despite being critical as it had a sticker of Hanuman, a Hindu deity, is fake. The viral screenshot aims to show that it is an article on Inshorts a news aggregator app and reported by Hindustan Times. A spokesperson from Inshorts told BOOM that the viral screenshot is fake, stating that no such story was published via the app.
The screenshot credits the information to Hindustan Times, with the headline that reads, "Kerala couple refuse ambulance with Hanuman sticker, dies." The screenshot mentions that a Christian couple named M Stalin and his wife Jaycee refused the ambulance trying to give it a communal overtone.
This was tweeted with the caption which when translated reads, "They are so disgusted with your veneration."
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Viral on Facebook
On searching with the same caption on Facebook, we found that the fake screenshot was being shared with the false claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral screenshot is fake and no such incident has occurred as being claimed in the post.
We reached out to a spokesperson from Inshorts who stated the screenshot is fake and no such piece was published on their platform. "This is fake, we have not published any such article as in this screenshot. The image has been doctored," a spokesperson told BOOM.
Using a keyword search, we looked up the article as mention in the screenshot, however, we did not find any such article published by Hindustan Times or any other report on such incident.
We found another article published by Hindustan Times with the same photo of an ambulance with a Hanuman sticker, but the report did not have any information regarding a Kerala couple refusing an ambulance.
The caption of the photo states that it was taken in Bengaluru, Karnataka. In the fake screenshot, the same photo is used to falsely claim that the incident occurred in Kerala.
The caption of the photo reads, "Family members and undertakers carry the body of a victim who died of the Covid-19 coronavirus at an open-air crematorium set up for the coronavirus victims inside a defunct granite quarry on the outskirts of Bangalore on May 8, 2021, as India recorded more than 4,000 coronavirus deaths in a day for the first time. (Manjunath Kiran / AFP)"
On comparing the fake screenshot with an actual Inshorts graphic from the app, we found that the format differs as we can clearly notice that the font of the text is much darker in the viral screenshot compared to an original graphic.
Additionally, we did not find any credible news reports on any such incident as mentioned in the viral screenshot.
