Human meat hoax on eatery

PTI, London, May 18 : A 60-year-old Indian restaurant in the UK could be forced to shut down after a fake news report claiming it served human meat went viral on Facebook.

Shinra Begum, the owner of KarriTwist in southeast London, said people had threatened to vandalise the building and police officers had to be called in.

The article had been uploaded on a prank news site where anonymous users can submit fake news before sharing then on social media, metro.co.uk reported yesterday.

"One person said he would break the windows if our shutters weren't up. One member of the public did report it to the police. It has greatly affected our business. We have had people call us up telling us how dare you serve us human meat. If it wasn't happening to me, I would laugh about it," Shinra said.

"This has done the rounds everywhere and people are believing this. We have had it (the restaurant) for 60 years and it could shut down after somebody wrote something like this," she said.

"Even though the article, consisting of just a single paragraph, was littered with spelling and grammatical errors, people believed it to be true," Shinra added.

The fake news was shared on Facebook with the headline "Asian restaurant shut down for using human meat".

It read: "Last night Indian restaurant owner Rarjan Patel was arrested for using human meat in his food recipes at his New Cross restaurant, it is said that a total of 9 human body's were found frozen ready to be processed for meat...."

Shinra said the restaurant had witnessed a drop in customers since the story surfaced. Some staff have had their hours cut because of the reduced business.