We came across this post on Singaporean chef Benny Se Teo’s Facebook page:

In his post, Chef Benny shares two photos – one of a man in an orange shirt being held back by police officers, and another of an individual, presumably a prata seller, holding up 5 fingers. The caption of the post states that a man (the one in the orange shirt) has been arrested for getting into a fight with a prata stall employee, and that the stall’s owner was alledgedly a Manchester United (“ManU”) fan who asked for “5 kosong” pratas. The location tagged in the post was Tekka Market.

For the unacquainted, “kosong” is ‘zero’ in Malay, and can be used in several contexts. In this particular incident, “kosong” refers to plain prata, and is also a dig at football club Manchester United’s dismal 5-0 score versus rival Liverpool last night.

While the post has understandably garnered a fair amount of laughs and an even more fair amount of shares (especially within such a short time frame), a commenter pointed out that it doesn’t seem like this incident happened recently:

As pointed out by the commenter, none of the individuals pictured in the photos are wearing masks, something that has been a mainstay in the pandemic.

While we were unable to find any results on Google Images, a reverse image search on TinEye revealed that the image first appeared on a 2018 report on CNA:

While the link to the article hosted on CNA is broken, we managed to find an archived version of the article using WayBack Machine. In the article, we read that a 34-year-old got into a fight with a prata stall employee at Holland Drive Food Centre and was arrested for causing a public nuisance. We also read that the man was described to be dressed in an orange T-shirt, black jeans and sneakers.

While we’re unable to find the source of the photo of the prata stall employee holding up five fingers, the lack of a face mask is already telling that the photo could be taken pre-COVID.

Zooming into the calendar on the wall, we also see the year ‘2017’, so that could very well be the actual year that the photo was taken in:

Perhaps Chef Benny is simply a Liverpool fan wanting to take a cheeky dig at Manchester United supporters, but regardless, it is false that a man was arrested at Tekka Market today after getting into a fight with a prata stall owner.