| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Interfaith marriage in Guj NOT called off because of 'Kerala Story', this incident is a year old
Sheikh Mohammad Sajid alleged that political groups had coerced his then-fiancée's family to call off the marriage in 2022.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
Both applicants filed a notice of marriage in March 2022, but decided to call off their marriage after alleged threats from political groups at the time. It had nothing to do with ‘The Kerala Story’.
Following the release of the controversial film 'The Kerala Story', there has been a deluge of social media posts claiming how it has supposedly awakened Hindu women to the realities of “Love Jihad”, a far-right conspiracy theory.
Taking to Twitter, one person claimed that a Hindu woman in Gujarat called off her marriage with a Muslim man after watching the film. He also shared photos of a non-judicial stamp paper and a copy of a notice under The Special Marriage Act, 1954, to corroborate the claim.
He wrote: "Gujarat: A Hindu girl after watching The Kerala Story movie has called off her marriage with a mslim [sic] man. Thank you Adah Sharma and the makers of The Kerala Story Movie for saving this Hindu girls life. Hope many more girls watch this movie and get alert of this Love Jihad." The archived version of this tweet and other similar ones can be seen here, here, and here.
India Today's investigation found that the interfaith couple calling off their marriage preceded the film by a year and thus had nothing to do with it.
THE DOCUMENTS
The first photo in the viral post was of a duly notarised non-judicial stamp paper of the denomination of Rs. 50, issued by the state of Gujarat on March 22, 2022.
A reverse search of the photos led us to another similar claim from May 14 on Facebook where the name of the woman applicant on the stamp paper wasn’t redacted.
The second photo was a notice of marriage issued under section 5 of the Special Marriage Act, according to which, when a marriage is intended to be solemnised under the Act, the parties to the marriage are required to give notice thereof in writing to the Marriage Officer of the district of one of the parties.
The purported notice being shared was not dated, though many viral posts claimed that the marriage was scheduled for May 23, 2023.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
The notice contained the personal details of both applicants for the marriage, Pooja Rajput and Sheikh Mohammad Sajid. With the help of the Vadodara address for Sajid provided there, we contacted a few businesses listed around it on Google Maps.
Among them was Shahid, an AC technician, who turned out to be a neighbour of Sajid.
Through him, India Today was able to contact Sajid’s brother Asif, who explained that his brother and Pooja kept both families in the dark about their relationship and filed a notice to marry in 2022.
This notice, he said, got leaked to political groups, whose members visited Pooja’s home and allegedly coerced the family to call off the wedding. Sajid and Pooja, according to Asif, ultimately didn’t go to the Registrar's office to solemnise the marriage.
India Today then spoke to Sajid, who affirmed that undue intimidation and influence from people of a certain political hue prevented them from getting married in March 2022.
Commenting on the now viral claim, Sajid told India Today: “The documents being shared online were submitted to Marriage Registrar’s office. However, they were leaked and some people with ill-intention shared them on social media and falsely linked them to ‘The Kerala Story’.”
He added, that it had been more than a year since he last contacted Pooja and that the issue had “long died out and whatever transpired in the last few days disrupted our peace.”
Sajid, Asif, and Rakshaben Soni, the lawyer who notarised the stamp paper, told India Today that following the viral claims in 2023, a team led by the Special Operations Group of the Vadodara police visited Sajid’s home to enquire about the case. Inspector VS Patel of the SOG, however, refuted this and told India Today that he had not heard of any such case in the city.
We also tried reaching out to Pooja but to no avail. This story will be updated as and when we receive a response.
With the evidence before us, it’s clear that an old photo of a notice expressing the intention of marriage under the Special Marriage Act is being circulated with inflammatory claims that a Hindu woman called off her marriage to a Muslim man after watching 'The Kerala Story'.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)