By Archis Chowdhury
An image of two bottles of the soft drink Rooh Afza is going viral on social media with the claim that its manufacturing company 'Hamdard' sells the product in India and Saudi Arabia with two different labels. Captions claim that the bottle sold in India has pictures of fruits, whereas bottles sold in Saudi Arabia and Dubai do not have pictures of fruits due to stricter advertising restrictions.
BOOM's fact-check reveals that the viral claim is false. An executive of 'Hamdard' told BOOM that the company sells Rooh Afza bottles in India and other countries around the world using the exact same label.
One of the viral posts on Facebook (archive link), contain a Hindi caption, that translates to English as, "Both of these are bottles of Rooh Afza. The first bottle is sold in India and has pictures of different types of fruits. The second bottle is sold in Saudi Arabia and does not have pictures of fruits, because according to the rules there, pictures cannot be used on the packaging of any food product which have not been used in that product. But this is India, here companies can fool anyone."
The same claim is also viral on social media platform X (archive link).
BOOM also received this photo with the same claim for verification on our WhatsApp tipline.
Fact Check
BOOM reached out to an executive of Hamdard, the company that makes Rooh Afza in India, who denied the viral claim. He said, "We print the same picture on the bottle for the product sold in India and any other country in the world. The viral picture is not of our product. This is completely false."
We did a reverse image search of the image of the bottle that contained a label with the words "Hamdard" written in Urdu. The results revealed that this label is used on the bottles of Rooh Afza made in Pakistan, by the Pakistani company Hamdard.
The company was also divided in 1947
In 1907, Rooh Afza was first prepared in Old Delhi by an individual named Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed. During the 1947 partition, Abdul Majeed's younger son Hakeem Mohammad Saeed went to Pakistan and there he started its production in Karachi under the banner of 'Hamdard' company. Meanwhile, Hakeem Hafiz Abdul Majeed's elder son Abdul Hameed stayed in India and continued production here with the brand name of the old 'Hamdard' Trust. As a result two different companies with the same name 'Hamdard' currently produce a product of the same name - the popular Rooh Afza - in India and Pakistan.
Amazon was asked to remove the product of Pakistan's Hamdard
In the year 2022, the Delhi High Court had also ordered Amazon India to remove Rooh Afza made by Pakistani 'Hamdard' company from its platform for Indian customers, after the Indian 'Hamdard' company had filed a case against its sale through e-commerce.
