CLAIM
A set of images is circulating on social media with the claim that Hyderabad police has issued a warning to not drink cold drinks like Fanta, Pepsi, Coke, etc in the upcoming days as they are contaminated with the Ebola virus.
“Please forward to your friends. Instructions have been issued to all of India on behalf of the Hyderabad police. In the coming few days, please do not drink cold drinks like Maaza, Fanta, 7 Up, Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, etc. A worker in one of these companies has mixed blood infected with a dangerous virus called Ebola,” the message reads.
The message further claims that the news was aired on NDTV.
These photos and the same claim has been widely shared on Facebook since 2017, appearing at intervals.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
The message doing the rounds is fake. The Hyderabad Police also issued a clarification on Saturday, 14 July, stating that the claims made in the viral message are false.
Moreover, the same photos have been in circulation since 2015, when they appeared in a blogpost, which claimed that they were taken when the District Food Authority officials raided a fake soft drinks factory in Gujranwala, Pakistan in 2015. However, The Quint was not able to independently verify whether these photos were actually from the said incident.
Therefore, these are old photos from a possibly different incident which are circulating with a different claim now.
This set of images were also viral in June with the claim, ‘Don’t drink any cool drinks it has (been) mixed with HTC poison which leads to death.’
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