Fact Check: 2016 video of stone pelting in Kerala shared with communal twist

Hyderabad: A video of a mob pelting stones is going viral on social media, with users claiming that the video shows Muslim boys in Kerala throwing stones at a bungalow of a Hindu resident, threatening them to vacate.

A Twitter user shared the video with the caption, “Muslim boys throwing stones on Hindu bungalows in Kerala threatening them to vacate, same like Kashmir situation is going to come in future #Kerala #keralastory. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is from 2016. It shows members of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) attacking the houses of supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Congress, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, to avenge the murder of their party worker Muhammad Aslam.

We extracted the keyframes of the viral video and performed a reverse image search, which led us to a video report published on August 15, 2016, by Manorama News titled “More than 50 house attacked in Nadapuram.”

As per the report, within two days, IUML workers, who were hiding their faces in the video, had attacked over 50 houses belonging to the supporters of the CPI(M), Congress, and the BJP. After police accessed the CCTV footage of the incident, cases were registered against 50 individuals in connection with the incident.

A report by The News Minute from August 13, 2016, said that attack was a consequence of the murder of Aslam, a 20-year-old worker of IUML, who was allegedly killed by CPI(M) workers in Nadapuram, Kozhikode district of Kerala. The report also mentioned that Aslam was one of the accused in the murder of Kuneri Shibin (19), a CPI(M) activist. He was later acquitted in the trial and left for Dubai. However, he was killed when he returned to Kerala on vacation.

According to Hindustan Times, Nadapuram is an infamous political battleground in Kerala where violence and murders occur frequently between political parties. The political rift between CPI(M) and IUML became significant after the murder of IUML’s Ariyil Shukkoor in Kannur in February 2012.

Hence, we conclude that the video is from 2016 and it shows IUML workers attacking houses of supporters from other political parties in retaliation for the murder of an IUML member, Aslam. The claim that Muslim boys attacked a Hindu person’s bungalow in Kerala is misleading.