Fact Check: Hyd police did not issue any advisory on consumption of Ebola-laced soft drinks

A viral message on WhatsApp claims that the Hyderabad police have warned the citizens on the ill-effects of consumption of ‘soft drinks’ as an employee working at a bottling unit has mixed blood infected with a dangerous virus called Ebola to the beverages.

The message reads, “Please forward this information Hyderabad police all over India. Please do not drink soft drinks like Maja, CoCo Cola, 7up, Thumsup, Pepsi, Sprite etc because one of the company’s workers mixed the contaminated blood of the dangerous virus called Ebola in it. (sic)”

The message further states that this news was reported by media channel NDTV.

FACT CHECK:

We checked the official website of Hyderabad police but did not find any press release related to consumption of soft drinks. No notice was issued on any of its social media platforms either. Neither was there any news being broadcast by NDTV about soft drinks laced with Ebola-infected blood. Moreover, there is no credible news report of an employee mixing blood contaminated with Ebola to the drinks.

The message is a hoax and has been going viral on WhatsApp for quite a few years. The same was viral in 2019 as well. At that time, the Hyderabad city police released a statement refuting a fake message on soft drinks attributed to them. Sharing the message and the images, the Hyderabad police wrote, “Fake news spreading on social media about cool drinks and a warning from Hyderabad city police is fake one and Hyderabad city police never released any message regarding this (sic).”

The Hyderabad police have not released any such advisory asking the public to avoid consuming soft drinks.

Recently, the PIB Fact Check clarified that the claim is not true and said that the government has not issued any such advisory.

Evidently, the WhatsApp message is a hoax.