A video of what appears to be a news bulletin clip is doing rounds on social media claiming that Indians have stopped worshipping idols and are destroying them amidst the raging second wave of COVID-19 pandemic.
The video claims that several Indian citizens have thrown idols they worshipped on the streets with the rising number of COVID-19 cases. A bulldozer can be seen crushing the idols. Moments later, another video shows Ganpati idols being immersed in a water body from a truck carrying them.
The news anchor narrates in the background, “Indians expressed their anger at the idols that they worshipped and sacrificed themselves for, but the idols did not protect them from the Coronavirus. They prayed to the idols because they believed that it could save them from the virus, but they finally discovered that they could not do anything and hence they destroyed it.”
The video is being shared on Facebook with a caption that reads, “Indians throw thousands of idols on the street for not protecting them against the virus”
Here’s the link to the above post.
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FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above claim and found it to be misleading.
Video 1
We extracted keyframes of the video and after putting it in InVid tool, it directed to a tweet featuring similar visuals. According to the video, Dashama idols were kept beside the banks of the Sabarmati river instead of immersing them to avoid water pollution.
Vijay Nehra, the then Commissioner of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation tweeted regarding the same on August 11, 2019.
A Twitter user replied to Nehra with the same video that has now been used in the viral video.
Thus, it is evident that the video has been on the internet since 2019 and it has nothing to do with COVID-19 pandemic.
Video 2
We ran a Reverse Image Search on keyframes of the video showing Ganpati idols being immersed in a waterbody from a truck.
We found that a Facebook user posted the video on September 24, 2015, with a caption in Telegu which reads, “It is located on the Krishna River Bridge in the Telangana State of NH 44, Mehboob Nagar District. Telangana police are immersing Ganpati.”
NewsMobile independently couldn’t verify the origin and context of the above video but it is certain that the video is OLD.
Therefore, from the above information, we can conclude that both these videos are old and are being shared with a misleading claim.
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