Two images are currently viral on social media. In one of them a man can be seen holding an animal bone and seemingly eating raw flesh off the bone. In the other one, a woman is seen holding a bone and eating flesh off it. It is being described as a beef protest by Congress supporters, and those who believe the images to be true are obviously shocked. However, this is yet another case of photo-shopping by the right-wing.

I first saw these images when I was alerted by a fellow Facebooker regarding these being circulated on Facebook. The account in question was that of one Mr Vishnu Vardhan.

As soon as I saw the images, I knew they were fake. Let’s look at the first image.

If you haven’t already figured out that this is the image of a man who’s slogan shouting with his fist raised in the air and his image has been superimposed with the bone of an animal, then look carefully. Look at the hand on the top left corner of the image. Also, look carefully at the centre of the bone. I have sliced out those to portions into separate images and can be seen below.

In the first slice, a shadow of a hand can be clearly seen. In the second slice, a shadow of the bone can be seen. Such a phenomenon is possible in two conditions. Lets say if you try to photograph a rotating fan, then you’ll see a shadow of the fan blades in the image as the camera’s shutter speed is typically not fast enough to capture a still image of the moving blades. In the image above, a man couldn’t be moving his hand fast enough while chewing on a raw bone to cause that kind of distortion in the image. The only other possibility is the image is morphed. The man standing in the background also has his fist raised, and with police around, this could be some sort of protest. This man also must be slogan shouting with his fist raised, and someone with an absolutely sick mind has morphed a bone into the picture.

Thus, it can be concluded that the images are morphed and fake. However, not everyone notices these things and as a result, the image is crazily viral right now. For ex a person with Twitter id @NaIna0806 who is followed by the Prime Minister himself and has over 45,000 followers tweeted the image.

It was also posed by a page called Narendra Modi for 2019 PM and got over 15,000 shares.

This page also claimed that these are Congress supporters, however the original pictures above do not have a single Congress flag or hoarding. In fact, if you look at the girl’s picture closely, she’s holding the picture of Periyar (bottom right).

The language on the posters is Tamil. The word “உரிமை” can be seen which according to some of my Tamil friends means “rights”. There are no news reports of Tamil Nadu Congress holding a beef protest like such. If they had, then like the video of Kerala Youth Congress slaughter a calf went viral and became the discussion topic in main stream media, this issue would have been covered by the media as well. Since the language on the posters is Tamil, it cannot be Kerala either which is the other place with wide-spread beef protests.

The viral images that show protestors eating raw meat are MORPHED and FAKE