An Indian restaurant in London could shut down after a fake news report which said said that it served human meat went viral on Facebook earlier this week.
The ‘news article’ came from a fake news website, where users can anonymously submit fake news stories to pull a prank on friends. Users can then post the article directly on Facebook.
After the fake news began making the rounds, the number of visitors to the restaurant, Karri Twist, has fallen sharply. The restaurant now faces a serious threat, its owner Shinra Begum said.
One person said he would have broken the windows if our shutters weren’t up. One member of the public did report it to the police... It has greatly affected our business. We have had people call us up telling us ‘how dare you serve us human meat’... If it wasn’t happening to me, I would laugh about it.Shinra Begum to UK news website News Shopper
The article was shared on Facebook with the headline 'Asian Restaurant Shut Down For Using Human Meat’.
The fake news story read: “Last night Indian restaurant owner Rarjan Patel was arrested for using human meat in his food recipes at his New Cross Restaurant, it is said that a total of 9 human body’s were found frozen ready to be processed for meat, Rarjan Patel remains in custody for further questioning whilst the restaurant has been closed down.”
This has done the rounds everywhere and people are believing this. We have had it (the restaurant) for 60 years and it could shut down after somebody wrote something like this.Shinra Begum
"Even though the article, consisting of just a single paragraph, was littered with spelling and grammatical errors, people believed it was true," Shinra added.
On Monday, Shinra took to Facebook to refute all the claims made by the fake news post.
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