No, the Viral Video Does Not Show Women Beating a Muslim Man Allegedly for abusing them; Here is The Truth…

A video showing a group of women pulling out a man from his car and thrashing him has gone viral on social media. The video is claimed to be of a group of women thrashing a Muslim man who allegedly abused them. 

However, when we investigated we found that the incident is not communal. The people seen in the video are from the same community. Let us check the narrative spun around this video and the complete truth of the incident.

Viral Video

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In the video above, we can see a group of women pulling out a man from his car and thrashing him with bare hands, sticks and chappals. The twitter user who has shared this video claims that the incident is from Kerala, where women thrashed a Muslim man for using ‘filthy’ language against them. 

Let us find out whether this claim is true or false.

Fact Check

We did a keyword search on Google with related keywords and found some news articles on the incident. The news reports claim that the incident took place in a village called Muriyad in Thrissur district of Kerala. The village houses a spiritual retreat center called Emperor Emmanuel Church. This center is the center of activities of a religious cult called Zion. The women are the members of the Emperor Emmanuel Church and the man who is being beaten is an ex-member of the Church.

As per a report by NDTV, the man named Shaji and his family were attacked after he left the retreat center. The women who attacked Shaji alleged that the latter shared morphed naked pictures of them. The Police was quoted by PTI as follows: “As per the man’s complaint, the women attacked him out of misunderstanding that he had propagated the morphed pictures of a woman related to the retreat centre.”

Following this complaint, Kerala Police arrested 11 women and started investigation. However, the members of Zion also leveled multiple allegations against Shaji and his family such as sexual harassment, attempt to murder, etc. The members of the group attacked Shaji’s relative as well. This created tensions in Muriyad and the Thrissur district collector had to intervene to urge both groups to stop violence.

As per media reports, the case is registered at Aloor Police Station. We spoke to the investigating officer Inspector Sibin M.B. He told us that, the campaign being run on social media around this video is False. The people seen in the video are from the same community. He further added, “The man Shaji was a member of the Zion religious group and he had a fallout with the group. He is not a Muslim and there is no communal angle to the incident.”

What is Emperor Emmanuel Church?

Emperor Emmanuel Church or Zion is situated in the Muriyad Village in Thrissur district of Kerala. Joseph Ponnara founded it. The group believes in Emmanuel who is the second coming of Jesus Christ and have many other beliefs that are different from the traditional Christian beliefs. The Church has often been described as a ‘Doomsday Cult’. Their website says: “Zion believes that, the Son of GOD, JESUS CHRIST, HAS COME AGAIN to this earth in flesh NOW. As prophesied by GOD through His prophet Isaiah, the Son of GOD is now called Emmanuel.”

The Church is not new to controversies and has faced allegations of registering fake police complaints against people who left the church. As per a report published in The Hindu, some ex-members claimed that the Church was targeting them. The ex-members alleged that the new leadership of the Church had introduced new methods and belief, which they did not agree upon and hence left. The vengeful church is now filing fake complaint against them, they added.  

Conclusion

From our investigation, we found that the claim made about the viral video is false. The video does not show women beating a Muslim man for using filthy language. The women beat a man named Shaji after alleging he had shared their morphed nude images. Shaji is an ex-member of Emperor Emmanuel Church in Muriyad, Kerala and the women are the members of the Church.