A photo of a woman carrying heavy luggage on her head was recently shared on social media, with users claiming that she was the first lady coolie of India. The users shared the post identifying the woman as 31-year-old Sandhya Marawi, who took up her husband’s job after his death in 2016. However, an investigation by PTI Fact Check Desk found the claim to be false as Marawi is not the first woman porter. Another woman named Manju Devi took up reportedly the job of porter at Jaipur Railway Station in 2013, four years before Sandhya started working as a porter at Katni Railway Station.
Claim:
A Facebook user shared on January 8 a photo of a woman, claiming that she was the first woman coolie of India. The user identified the woman as 31-year-old Sandhya Marawi, who took up her husband’s job in 2016 after his death.
“Salute to women power. 31-year-old lady coolie Sandhya Marawi, badge no 36. Her husband died in 2016, so she took up her husband’s job, who used to work as a coolie, to feed her three small kids and her mother-in-law! She works at Katni Railway Station in Jabalpur. She is the first lady coolie,” the user shared the photo with the caption.
Here is the link and archive link to the post, and below is a screenshot of the same.
Investigation:
The Desk ran the photo through Google Lens and found a similar claim made by a Facebook user. Here is a link and an archive link to the post.
On further scanning the search results, the Desk also found that similar posts with the same claims have been making rounds on social media platforms over the years. Two such posts can be seen here and here, with their archive versions available here and here.
In the next part of the investigation, the Desk conducted a customised keyword search on Google and found multiple media reports which identified the woman in the frame above as Sandhya Marawi, who took up the job as a coolie after the death of her husband in 2016.
A report by The Better India news portal on May 28, 2018, identified Marawi as a native of Kundam village in Madhya Pradesh who travels over 40 km daily to get to her work “station.”
Notably, the report mentioned that Marawi was neither the first woman coolie nor the only one presently working in the male-dominated job, “but her determination to help her family is indeed inspirational.”
Further, the search results about the first female coolie also led the Desk to reports covering Manju Devi. A report by The Indian Express on May 28, 2018, stated, “Manju Devi acquired her deceased husband Mahadev’s porter license no. 15 and took to the demanding task of hauling luggage of passengers at the Jaipur Railway Station in 2013.”
Here is the link to the report, and below is a screenshot of the same.
During the investigation, we also came across a YouTube video posted on a channel named Context, run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The video, published on June 5, 2013, depicted the story of Manju Devi, who, after her husband’s death, entered into the occupation of a coolie to support her family.
Here is the link to the video, and below is a screenshot of the same.
The Desk also found a YouTube video by NDTV posted on Mar 20, 2013, reporting about Manju Devi. The video’s headline read: “Manju, Rajasthan’s first woman coolie (porter).”
Here is the link to the video and below is a screenshot of the same:
While it cannot be claimed that Manju Devi was India’s first woman porter (coolie), but it was confirmed that she started working as a woman porter in 2013, way before Sandhya took up the job of porter in 2017.
The Desk subsequently concluded that Sandhya Marawi could not be termed India’s first woman porter. The social media posts were shared with a false claim.
We found during the investigation that this claim has been time and again shared on social media over the past several years. PTI Fact Check has debunked this claim earlier too, back in January 2023. Click here to read the report.
Conclusion: Multiple social media users shared posts claiming that Sandhya Marawi, a 31-year-old porter at Katni Railway Station in Madhya Pradesh, was India’s first woman coolie. However, the Desk found in its investigation that Marawi reportedly took up the job in 2016, whereas Manju Devi, another woman porter at Jaipur Railway Station, has been working there at least since 2013. Hence, social media posts were shared with false claim.
(The fact-check article was originally published by PTI Fact Check and has been republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of Shakti Collective.)
