CLAIM
A report by news agency Asian News International on Thursday, 30 January said that Manir Hossain, a 23-year-old man from India’s Tripura, had died in a hospital in Malaysia due to coronavirus.
According to the report, which quoted Abdul Rahim, Hossain’s grandfather, the family had received a call from Malaysian authorities on Wednesday, who told them that Hossain had passed away due to coronavirus.
"My 23-year-old grandson had gone to Malaysia around two years ago. We got a phone call from the Malaysian authorities on Wednesday morning, informing us of Hossain's death due to coronavirus," ANI quoted Rahim as saying.
The report further said that Hossain, who hailed from Tripura’s Purathal Rajnagar village in Madhupur police station area, had gone to Malaysia in 2018 and worked at a restaurant there.
ANI reported that Rahim had urged the Malaysian authorities to repatriate his grandson’s body as soon as possible.
Many news outlets carried the ANI report as is, among them NDTV, Hindustan Times, Business Standard and The Times of India.
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News agency IANS also did a report on the same incident, quoting family sources as saying that Hossain’s death had occurred due to coronavirus. However, IANS stated in the same report that Tripura Health and Family Welfare Director Radha Debbarma said the government has no information about the youth's death due to coronavirus infection in Malaysia.
The Economic Times carried the report by IANS.
News outlet DNA also did a report on the death of this man but said that while family sources said that Hossain had died due to coronavirus, authorities were yet to confirm the same.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The report that this man from Tripura died in Malaysia owing to coronavirus has been called out as fake by the Director-General (DG) of Malaysia’s Health Ministry, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
Malaysian news portal Malaysiakini reported on Thursday that Abdullah had dismissed as fake news a report carried by Indian media that an Indian national had died of coronavirus in Malaysia.
“Fake news. No one has died from coronavirus in Malaysia," Abdullah told Malaysiakini.
The Twitter handle of Malaysia’s Health Ministry also tweeted about the report, calling the news fake. Their tweet says that according to information received until 6 pm on 30 January, no laboratory performing 2019-nCoV validation test in Malaysia had any records of a 23-year-old Indian citizen.
Therefore, it is clear that the news carried by ANI and IANS is fake.
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