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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Religion & belief fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about religion & belief. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,371 published reviews in this topic

Fact CrescendoReligion & belief

Claim: fake news circulating that annamalai commented briyani eaters not hindus

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review investigated social-media posts attributing to BJP leader Annamalai the statements that biryani eaters were not Hindus and that foods such as grilled chicken and barbecue should be banned in Tamil Nadu. It says one version appeared in a news card bearing the Thanthi TV logo, and that another version used the News 7 Tamil logo. The cards were shared by people who treated the claim as true, including to mock the BJP. The article’s finding concerns these attributed statements and cards, not a general claim about Annamalai’s views on food. To check the cards, the publisher says it contacted the digital teams at Thanthi TV and News 7 Tamil for clarification. Both said the purported reports circulating under their names were fake. The article also reports that Nirmal Kumar, identified as a BJP IT wing administrator, posted a denial on Twitter. These are the specific checks and evidence described in the supplied review; it does not provide the outlet representatives’ names or reproduce the denial’s full text. Based on those responses and the reported denial, the review concludes that the news cards were fabricated to ridicule the BJP, and that people were sharing them as genuine. Its conclusion therefore addresses whether Annamalai made the statements presented in the cards: the review found the circulating attribution unreliable.

FACTLYReligion & belief

Video of a priest attacking a Christian man as he preached Christianity in the Secunderabad Ganesh Temple

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim concerns a video said to show a priest at the Secunderabad Ganesh Temple attacking a Christian man for preaching Christianity. FACTLY’s review says the assault did occur at the temple, but that the man assaulted was a devotee, not a Christian. The distinction matters: the video depicts an assault, while the post’s asserted motive and the victim’s religious identity are not supported by the investigation. To identify the incident, FACTLY says it used reverse image search on screenshots from the circulating video and found similar footage published by ETV Telangana. The review reports that the scenes came from the temple’s CCTV cameras and that the incident took place on 27 February 2022. It describes the assaulted man as Valmiki Rao, who filed a complaint with the Gopalapuram police station. The decisive evidence reported by FACTLY is its direct contact with the Gopalapuram police station’s SHO, Sai Eshwar Gaud. According to the review, he said Rao belonged to the Hindu Munnuru Kapu community and clarified that there was no communal angle to the incident. This contradicts the post’s characterization of the victim as Christian and the assault as a response to Christian preaching.

FACTLYReligion & belief

Video of pro-Hindu activists pushing a Muslim woman out of a bus for wearing a Hijab

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video presented as showing pro-Hindu activists pushing a Muslim woman off a bus in India because she wore a hijab. FACTLY reports that the footage instead depicts an incident in Bangladesh in March 2021. It says a speech-impaired woman was thrown from a bus after not paying the fare, and that the incident had no connection to India’s hijab row. The review identifies the location as Rohitpur, on the Dhaka–Nawabganj Road in Keraniganj. To check the video’s provenance, FACTLY says it reverse-image-searched screenshots from the circulating clip and found a video with similar visuals published by Dhaka Post on 8 March 2021. That report described a speech-impaired woman being thrown from a bus for not paying the fare and placed the incident in Rohitpur. FACTLY also says other Bangladeshi news channels shared the video with a similar description. The review further reports that Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion arrested the driver and helper of the N Malik bus and seized the bus. Taken together, the location, earlier publication of matching footage and reporting about the fare dispute identify the clip as footage of the Bangladesh incident—not the claimed anti-Muslim hijab incident in India.