Oct. 9: Hundreds of migrant labourers have fled Kerala over the weekend after a series of WhatsApp messages, accompanied with gory pictures of dead bodies, falsely claimed that many outstation workers had been murdered in the state.

The Kerala chief minister's office tonight alleged the "lies" were being spread from "the north of the country" to discredit the state and "destroy peace and harmony", and warned of stringent action.

Local administrations and businesses are worried because Kerala's 30 lakh migrant workers play a key role in the state's economy, filling the void left by the 50 lakh Malayalis who live and work elsewhere.

Restaurateurs, some of whom have been forced to close because their outstation workers have left, have lodged police complaints against the mischievous posts, which come with voice messages in broken Hindi warning migrants to leave Kerala.

"More than 400 workers, mainly from Bengal and the northeastern states, left Kozhikode on Saturday and Sunday. It seems that more are set to leave in the coming days," T.V. Mohammed Zuhail, Kozhikode district president of the Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association, told The Telegraph today.

While the mini-exodus started from Kozhikode on Saturday, the state's commercial capital of Kochi, 175km away, saw many migrant workers leave last evening. Several hundred caught the train to Howrah from the industrial hub of Aluva in Ernakulam yesterday.

Police have not yet been able to identify who started the chain of audio messages and pictures that are now being circulated among the migrants workers' own WhatsApp groups. Nor has any motive been established.

"These pictures are not from Kerala. Perhaps they are pictures of some riot in the north. Kerala has not witnessed sectarian riots in decades," said T.C. Rafeeq, Ernakulam district secretary of the hotel and restaurant association.

Zuhail said: "Migrant labourers are treated fairly in Kerala and paid better than in their own states. But being mostly semi-literate and gullible, they have panicked at the rumours."

In May, Kerala became the first state to provide free health insurance to its migrant workforce.

Rafeeq said: "We caught one Bengali man spreading rumours and asking some restaurant workers to leave immediately. When we questioned him, he claimed he was doing it for fun."

The man has been handed over to the police, who have promised to involve their cyber cell in the probe.

Irudaya Rajan, a professor at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram who has researched migration for years, urged the state government to reassure the workers.

"Kerala needs them; so it must do everything to persuade them to stay," he said.

State police chief Loknath Behera clarified tonight that no migrant worker had been attacked or killed and appealed to the migrants and their families not to heed rumours.

Some 40 lakh of Kerala's own people work abroad while another 10 lakh live in other Indian states. The state's economy is largely dependent on the Rs 80,000 crore it receives in annual remittances from the Gulf.

Rafeeq said: "You won't find Malayalis doing hard labour or menial jobs; these are done almost entirely by migrants."

Kerala's dependence on migrant workers started with Tamilians flooding its labour market in the early 1980s. After they returned home, thanks to the economic growth of Tamil Nadu and the sops offered by its governments, migrants from the north, east and northeast replaced them.

Plywood factories and construction firms, especially in Ernakulam, employ large numbers of migrants.

Five years ago, Bangalore had witnessed an exodus by two lakh people from the northeast, mainly workers and students, after WhatsApp posts said they would be attacked. It was alleged that mischievous messages from Pakistan, projecting riot pictures from Myanmar as images of violence in Assam, had fanned the panic.