The internet is a great place to be on. It makes you laugh, it makes you cry and it turns a small town girl into a star overnight – the recent example being Malayalam actress Priya Prakash Varrier. The 18-year-old has been making headlines for her wink in a song that went viral, from her debut movie Oru Adaar Love's teaser. And has even attracted a controversy thanks to a complaint filed by a resident of Hyderabad.
Set aside from these, Priya was the butt of several memes. But a joke by a parody account went way too far that it got covered by several media houses as a real news. A fake statement by Maulana Atif Qadri, the vice-president of the West Bengal Minority United Council, made rounds claiming that a fatwa has been issued against the internet sensation for hurting religious sentiments.
A fake statement reads, "After the viral video of Priya Prakash Varrier, whenever we or our fellow Muslim Brothers closed our eyes to offer Namaz, instead of Allah, her face would appear, which is hurting our sentiments, hence we issued a fatwa against her."
The fake statement was issued by a parody account called Times How. The satire account's profile picture has a close similarity to the logo of Times Now which caused a chaos online.
A popular Hindi news channel also hosted a debate based on the tweet, however, the anchor later apologized for the confusion caused.
The news channel was not the only one to be fooled. Several senior media personalities, internet stars, and online users fell prey to the fake tweet and reacted to the false statement. Later, many apologized for it.
No chill. Got no chill at all. https://t.co/LzQUNXfs3l
— Saurabh Joshi (@SaurabhJoshi) February 14, 2018
Have to say that goddamn @TiimesHow tweet was genius. Thousands got taken in & I was no exception when these two tweets appeared on my feed courtesy @vasudha_ET & @GargiRawat. Perhaps because more than the handle and the DP likeness, the content was totally believable. Mea culpa! pic.twitter.com/LbIGbHmUUA
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) February 14, 2018
According to Maulana Atif Qadri, one actress Priya Prakash Varrier has shaken the whole 20 crores Muslim community in India that he had to pass a fatwa against her.
— TheGiniKhan (@giniromet) February 14, 2018
According to Maulana Atif Qadri, one actress Priya Prakash Varrier has shaken the whole 20 crores Muslim community in India that he had to pass a fatwa against her. How weak minded these people are in sex. No wonder they get 72 hoors. @tufailelif @Javedakhtarjadu
— CA S.S.Balakrishnan (@balashernaz) February 14, 2018
Oh internet, what a weird, weird world you are!
