Fact Check: Claim of actor Suriya converting to Islam is FALSE

Hyderabad: Recently, Tamil actor Suriya released a statement on Twitter criticizing the Supreme Court for forcing students to write NEET, amidst the pandemic. In his statement, the actor said the three deaths by suicide, till the day before the scheduled exam, due to the stress and anxiety of taking the test amid the pandemic had "shaken his conscience".

After this, an old claim that Suriya has converted to Islam has revived on social media. A few users retweeted claims done in September 2019.

The tweets mentioned that Suriya has converted to Islam to marry Jyotika, his wife, who is also a Muslim woman.

The old tweets contained a photograph of Suriya being blessed by an Islamic cleric.

Archived links of the claims can be found here, here, here and here.

Fact Check:

The claim that Suriya converted to Islam is FALSE.

When searched using the keywords "Suriya converted to Islam", we found several results and even videos from 2013, when he was shooting for Singam -2, during which he visited Ameen pur dargah in Kadapa.

A close associate of Suriya, Rajasekar Pandian, also took to Twitter to put the rumors to rest. Rajasekar clarified that this was an old video taken when Suriya had visited the Ameen Peer Dargah in Kadapa in 2013 and that he'd done so on music composer A.R. Rahman mother's invitation. Suriya had reportedly gone to Kadapa for Singam-2 shooting.

A press note has also been issued regarding the news.

Actor Suriya has not converted into a Muslim, it is an old video during the Singam-2 shooting !!

This clarification was published in News minute report in 2017.

A clarification was also published in a report published by the IndianExpress.com, in March 2018.

This claim was also debunked by Times of India in September 2019.

The claim that Suriya converted to Islam is FALSE.