Multiple videos of a Keralite in Qatar being beaten up by a large group of men from the state have gone viral on social media.
On May 8, a group attacked the man at Safari Mall in the capital Doha, alleging that he posted inflammatory comments in Malayalam about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.
Though the Qatar government and Indian community officials have appealed for calm according to a report on Doha News, an audio clip has surfaced now which is believed to have been used to mobilise the crowd that carried out the attack.
The six-and-half-minute long clip has the audio of an unidentified man saying in Malayalam that the man (who was attacked) was in Qatar and that in spite of making a lot of money in a Muslim state, he has abused Allah. The audio further goes on to say that it will be easy to track him down through Facebook.
The voice exhorts people to seek out the man and ends saying, “You all circulate a lot of unnecessary stuff on social media, this is a clip that is important, so circulate this.”
According to a BBC report, a group approached and confronted the man about screenshots of Facebook comments. The man can be seen crouching against a wall, with a handful of men trying to calm the agitated crowd.
In the video which is supposed to be the only evidence of the incident, the man is seen getting manhandled, abused in Malayalam, while some people are seen busy filming the incident.
However, in the Doha News report, Girish Kumar, the president of the Indian Cultural Center in Qatar said that “it was unclear whether the victim was actually the person responsible for posting any inflammatory material online”.
