Kerala

Fake post on RSS man attacked at Kerala wedding was an image from a web series

Several users on Twitter had shared the fake tweet which claimed that an RSS Karyavahak called 'Chandraboss' was beaten up in Kerala.
Chandraboss from Smile Please by Karikku
Chandraboss from Smile Please by Karikku
Written by:
TNM
Published on: 

- Archit Mehta 

Several Twitter and Facebook users have juxtaposed two images of a man, one of which shows him badly wounded. The text on the image reads, “This is mr. Chandraboss (RSS karyavahak). He was beaten to a pulp just because he attended a Muslim marriage. This happened in God’s own country Kerala.”

Twitter user @Im_shithun posted the viral image and wrote, “0% humanity, 100% literacy, Shame on Kerala! #JusticeForChandraboss“. The user tagged OpIndia and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This tweet gained over 100 retweets. 

Several Facebook users have made similar posts.

Fact Check 

Alt News glanced at replies to the tweet by @Im_shithun and found a tweet by @JoySojo which stated that the pictures are from a Malayalam special episode called 'Smile Please' released by Karikku, a team YouTube web series creators who release viral content. 

Using this as a clue we performed a keyword search on Facebook and found the official page of Karikku. The Hindu reported that Karikku has 3.8 million subscribers and leads the list of top content creators in Malayalam on YouTube. Some of their super hit shows include Thera Para, which tells the story of four friends and has become the most viral web series based on page views in Malayalam. Another series Karikku has released is Plus 2, which also gained significant traction.

The page uploaded a photo that shows actors of the series ‘Smile Please!’ While we couldn’t find the exact frames seen in the post, we found the man wearing identical clothes as in the video and with a hand in a cast, as seen in the image used in the fake post.

In the episode too, the man's name is Chandraboss and he plays the role of the groom's uncle. The 25 minute episode ends in a fight between the groom's friends and colleagues, with both parties getting beaten up. Eventually they realise that Chandraboss had sparked the entire fight after which, the latter too gets beaten up. The black-eye and hand cast on the man is the make-up done in order to shoot the certain parts in the series and are not real. 

The actor’s name is Arjun Ratan. On August 19, Ratan had posted the viral images on his Instagram.

This was earlier fact-checked by The Quint.

Thus the social media claim that the viral image shows an RSS worker who was beaten up for attending a Muslim wedding is false. 

The images were posted by actor Arjun Ratan who played a role in a Malayalam YouTube web-series.

This story was first published on Alt News and has been republished with permission. The original article can be found here.

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