A video of a group of burqa clad students in Kerala shouting at a woman passenger in a bus has been shared by many right wing handles with false captions. “Muslim women passengers say they will not allow women in buses without burqas. Now, Hindus have to cover their head to travel by public transport. Surprisingly, this incident is not covered by the news media. God’s own country is now Allah's own country,” said one tweet.
Another one said, “Just a bunch of young Hijabi women heckling a middle aged Hindu woman and asking her to get off the bus. Location: Kerala, God's own country. You decide, which GOD?”
However, in reality, the videos of the incident which took place in Kerala’s Kasaragod district was with regard to a protest by students of a women’s college against private buses for not stopping at the bus stop in front of their college. The woman in blue saree, who can be seen in the video, was a passenger in the bus and she reportedly got into an argument with the students for delaying the bus.
In yet another video of the incident, a group of students from the college can also be seen stopping the bus in the middle of the road, demanding that the bus halt at the bus stop in front of their college and allow students to travel. “There is a bus stop here. Why do you think there is a bus stop here?”, a student can be seen shouting at the bus driver.
In one of the videos, taken from inside the bus the woman in blue saree can be seen arguing with the students and requesting them to speak one at a time. At this point, one of the students can also be heard telling her, “Don’t you have a child? Why don’t you understand the plight of students waiting here under the scorching heat without buses stopping?”
The altercation happened in a bus running through the Kumbla - Seethangoli route in Kasaragod district. The students were from Khansa Women’s college Kumbla. Speaking to TNM, one of the teachers of the school said that only a small part of the video was being circulated.
“There was a huge protest from the students of the college as buses were not stopping at the college stop. Buses don’t want students with student passes to board. Many buses did not stop, so the students protested and forcefully entered a bus. When this happened, the woman seen in the video, wearing a blue saree, who was inside the bus started abusing them. This provoked the students and they started shouting at the woman and driver. This has nothing to do with religion,” he said.
As per reports, the SHO of Kumbala police station, VV Rajeevan, has also reportedly clarified that there is no communal angle to the incident. “The only issue here was that buses were not stopping at the recently constructed bus stop. The students wearing burqa were trying to explain this issue to the lady in the video, as she was annoyed at the delay caused due to the protest,” said the police official.
One of the students of the college told TNM that they had been requesting for a bus stop for a long time now. And finally, after submitting a petition to the state Transport minister, the panchayat had built a bus stop. “However, there was no order from the RTO. The private buses were totally against students boarding buses. So what happened on Friday was part of our long protest. My friends who were in the bus told me the woman in the bus was very abusive and the bus staff were in support of her,” said the student.
Even BJP leaders like Anil K Antony had shared the false narrative of the incident. In a tweet, which he later deleted, Anil Antony described the incident as “bullying by a bunch of Burqa clad women”.