The Kerala Story

The Kerala Story is a film released in 2023, directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. The story centers on the theme of women from Kerala being coerced into conversion and joining ISIS. The movie ran into controversies over the alleged demonizing of a minority community

In May 2023, BOOM found a fake news being widely spread, which claimed “Hindu women from India and Bangladesh being rescued by UN troops from ISIS camps”

We did a reverse image search with keyframes from the viral video, which led us to a report by the media wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces - containing screenshots of the viral video. After that we found a Twitter thread by the Information and Documentation Department of the YPJ, which contained the viral video, along with further details on the rescue operation. We then found that the women rescued in the video were Yezidi - a Kurdish minority group and not from India or Bangladesh.

Another fake news related to “The Kerala Story” was also shared in May last year, where a tweet was falsely linked to the actor Sanjjanaa Galrani’s Hajj Trip to The Kerala Story. We found the claims to be misleading as Sanjjanaa has been married to Azeez Pasha, which is why she went to Hajj along with him.

Earlier, BOOM also fact checked about television actress Devoleena Bhattacharjee which states that she worked as a supporting actor in The Kerala Story.