A video of a man bathing in milk is being shared as one from Kerala with a communal spin.
What is the claim?: Those sharing wrote that the video shows a Muslim man from Kerala taking bath in the milk that is sold to Hindus.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
This post recorded 244.3K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
We received a message about this on our WhatsApp tipline.
Did this happen in Kerala?: No, the claim is false.
The video originates from Konya in Turkey and shows a man who identified as Emre Sayar. The incident took place at a dairy plant in 2020.
How did we find out?: At first, we divided the video into screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
We came across a story by one Tupănese portal which noted that the video was from Turkey. The story also included screengrabs of the viral video.
To verify this, we ran a relevant keyword search using "man bathes in milk turkey" and came across multiple reports from 2020.
Hurriyet Daily News reported on 6 November 2020 that a man was spotted taking a bath in milk at a dairy factory in Konya, Turkey.
The report included the same video as the viral video. We matched a few frames and found similarities.
Here is a comparison between the two.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
The report noted that the footage went viral on TikTok. The man in the tub was identified as Emre Sayar, who was an employee at the dairy factory.
Another employee, Uğur Turgut shared the footage. Both had been arrested.
The report also mentioned that officials fined the dairy plant and closed it down due to the risk it posed to human health.
The company claimed that this was done to "defame" them, reported Hurriyet.
Additionally, the Indian Express and NDTV also reported on this viral video in 2020.
Conclusion: The video is being shared as one from Kerala with a false communal claim that it shows a Muslim man bathing in milk that is sold to Hindus.
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