A Six-Year-Old Incident Of Food Contaminated With Human Feces Resurfaces

Authors

Saurabh Pandey

A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.

A viral forward is doing the rounds in WhatsApp groups claiming that after spitting in food, Muslims are now contaminating food with human feces. It further claims that as many as 150 people are infected with food poisoning and other serious diseases because of this contamination. As per the viral forward, in Britain’s Nottingham, two brothers Abdul Basit and Amzad own a restaurant namely ‘Khyber Pass Kebab Shop’ where 150 people fell seriously ill after the restaurant served them food which was contaminated with the human feces. The duo has been booked and fined 28,000 pounds by the court. Among the infected is one 13-year-old girl who is admitted to the ICU and after the outbreak, when police raided the restaurant, they found that the two brothers were serving unhygienic food. The viral forward also contains the link of an online portal to back the claim.

Fact Check

The viral post was sent to our official fact-checking number by multiple readers.

As we began investigating this claim, we first checked the link mentioned in the viral forward. The link opens a portal namely ‘Agni Post’. We found that the content of the viral forward is taken from the portal itself.

We performed a Google search using the keywords mentioned in the viral forward. We found that the incident indeed took place at The Khyber Pass in Nottingham.

We found a report carried by the BBC which throws more light on the issue and indicates that the incident took place in June 2014 and Mohammad Abdul Basit and Amjad Bhatti pleaded guilty to breaching food hygiene regulations in August same year.

The owners of a kebab shop which sold food contaminated with human faeces have been ordered to pay compensation to customers who became ill. A rare strain of E. coli – only the second outbreak of its kind in Europe – was found at The Khyber Pass in Nottingham in June 2014.

An excerpt from the aforementioned BBC article reads, “A rare strain of E. coli – only the second outbreak of its kind in Europe – was found at The Khyber Pass in Nottingham in June 2014. In August, owners Mohammad Abdul Basit and Amjad Bhatti pleaded guilty to breaching food hygiene regulations. More than 140 people were affected by the outbreak. Appearing at Nottingham Crown Court, the owners were each given a suspended four-month jail sentence and ordered to pay each victim £200. Breaches included selling food unfit for human consumption, poor personal cleanliness of food workers and inadequate hand washing facilities and drainage.”

We matched the description of the incident mentioned in the BBC report with that of the viral claim and we found that both the incidents are largely the same. However, the BBC report carries no pictures of Mohammad Abdul Basit and Amjad Bhatti so in order to verify this description we searched further and found a report published by Daily Mail which carries a photograph of the accused.

Mohammad Abdul Basit and Amjad Bhatti own Khyber Pass, Nottingham Responsible for outbreak of E.coli that saw 142 customers fall seriously ill One 13-year-old girl was taken to intensive care where she nearly died Pleaded guilty to seven offences and given one-year suspended sentences Two kebab shop owners who infected nearly 150 customers after their meals were contaminated with human faeces have been ordered to pay £28,000 in compensation.

Additionally, we also performed a custom Google search to know more about the incident but we didn’t find anything to corroborate. However, it is evident from our fact-check above that the incident took place in 2014 and the accused have been punished in accordance with the law. The incident is being shared again to disturb communal harmony. Hence the viral forward is ‘Misleading’.

Tools Used

• Google Search

Result: Misleading

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Authors

Saurabh Pandey

A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.