Fact Check: Was the woman found begging at railway station a Kerala school teacher?
A post has been going viral on social media claiming that a woman who was abandoned and found in a railway station was a Maths teacher in a school a few years ago.
By Tejal Sinha Published on 20 July 2021 10:37 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A post has been going viral on social media claiming that a woman who was abandoned and found in a railway station was a Maths teacher in a school a few years ago.
According to this post, a student found her teacher at a railway station in a sad state. At first, she did not realize the woman was her teacher but later recognized her. The woman told her student that her children had thrown her out of the house after she retired.
Fact Check
The claim is misleading. It is old news that has been passed off as recent.
NewsMeter performed a Google reverse image search and found several new reports.
According to a report by Outlook published on 13 November 2017, Vidya M.R, a government employee in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, walked to the central railway station in the city to meet a friend on 5 November. Little did she know that it was going to be a special day in her life. Her interventions through social media on the day helped a retired school teacher who was found abandoned and begging outside the railway station to reach a safe shelter and to reunite with her old students.
Another report by Scoop Whoop published on 15 September 2020 identified the woman as Valsa, a former Maths teacher at a school in Malappuram, Kerala. Three years ago, a woman, Vidya M.R, had spotted her begging at a railway station in Kerala and her life changed had thereafter. When Vidya met the retired school teacher outside the railway station, she was wearing dirty clothes.
The viral post states that the name of the former teacher is Vidya M.R. However, from the news reports we could confirm that her name is Valsa, while the student who found her is Vidya M.R.
It is evident that the claim made through the viral post is misleading as old news is being passed off as recent news. The name of the woman is also wrongly mentioned as Vidya M.R, which in fact is the name of the student who found her.
