A video showing a love story between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man interspersed with footage of VIP Industries' 'Skybag' suitcases, is doctored and fake. The viral video is being shared with a false and communal claim that the suitcase manufacturer made an ad promoting inter-faith relationships.
The video shows a sequence where a Hindu woman is wooing a Muslim man. The latter gifts her a salwar kameez and the woman, who was earlier wearing a South Indian saree swaps it for the salwar kameez. The man then removes the bindi from her forehead and drapes her dupatta over her head as a veil.
The viral video abruptly ends with a visual of VIP Skybags suitcase and a voice-over saying, "Wedding favourites from VIP bags." Social media users have mistake it for an ad by the luggage brand.
The video is being shared with a caption that claims "Love Jihad promoting video from Kerala" and is being shared with the caption, "Love Jihad Advt by Skybag in Kerala..very disturbing.* We should boycott VIP products immediately and spread the news all over India"
'Love-jihad' is a conspiracy theory peddled by the Hindu right-wing that alleges an elaborate ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into romantic relationships with the ultimate aim to convert the latter to Islam.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the original video is an Instagram reel made by two Malayalam actors to promote religious harmony on the occasion of Eid and is not an ad by VIP or any of its affiliate brands.
A reverse image search for a keyframe from the video showed several results on Twitter calling it out for promoting 'love jihad'.
In the video shared on Twitter, a watermark of 'KCaptures by Kiran' can be seen. Using this as a clue we ran a search for the name and found that the logo belongs to a wedding video and photographer's page.
A further search for the same led us to the original video uploaded by Sumi Rashik, a Malayalam TV serial actor and model, on her Instagram account @sumirashik_official_. The reel also tagged the actor Vishnu K Vijayan.
The original video did not have any reference to VIP or any suitcase.
Sumi who posted the video on April 20, 2023 captioned the video "Soofiyum Sujathayum" with hashtags saying Ramzan Mubarak and used the song 'Vathikkalu Vellaripravu' in the reels.
Sumi and Vishnu's reel is a remake of the song Vathikkalu Vellaripravu from the 2020 Malayalam movie Soofiyum Sujathayum starring Aditi Rao Hydari and portrays the love story between a Hindu girl and a Muslim man.
The actor uploaded several photos and videos from the same shoot and none of them showed any visuals related to VIP or Skybags.
Further, we noticed that the viral video had another text on it - 'Puffington Ghost' a pro right-wing Facebook page satirically named after Huffington Post.
A search for the same led us to a now-deleted Facebook page. The cached version of the page showed that it had 8.8k followers with its bio saying "satire/parody".
View an archive of the cached version here
A keyword search on Google Images for Puffington Ghost showed a cached version of photos uploaded in posts by the page, with most of them mocking Muslims, Sikhs, Sonia Gandhi, and the Congress party.
We also found a statement uploaded by VIP Industries on their social media pages and their website calling the viral video a "fake, malicious and mischievous advertisement."
The statement which said the company had not made the ad further added that the creator had "unlawfully used VIP and Skybags brand names" in an attempt to "tarnish the image of our company..." The company also stated, "VIP Industries has not issued and has no connection with the person who has put this advertisement. VIP Industries has filed a police complaint against the same for unauthorized usage of its name and Trademarks"
