India’s Kumbh Mela pageant attracts tens of thousands and thousands of Hindu trustworthy to Prayagraj in northern Uttar Pradesh state, however footage of an aged monk making an providing at a shrine that circulated on-line is unrelated. The clip was filmed within the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, whereas native media reported the monk died weeks earlier than the world’s largest spiritual gathering started on January 13, 2025.
“A 154-year-old monk who got here from the Himalayan mountains to take part within the Maha Kumbh Mela,” learn a Facebook post from January 25 that confirmed a clip of a crowd watching an aged monk at a Hindu shrine.
Hindi textual content overlaid on the clip reads: “154-year-old monk”.
Screenshot of the false Fb put up, captured on January 25, 2025
The video surfaced with comparable claims on X and Instagram as pilgrims from throughout India and past — anticipated to achieve round 400 million — participate within the Kumbh Mela working from January 13 to February 26.
The millennia-old sacred present of religious piety is held each 12 years in Prayagraj on the website the place the holy Ganges, Yamuna and the legendary Saraswati rivers meet (archived link).
The ritual of bathing within the holy rivers is commonly led by a gaggle of holy males, after which adopted by 1000’s of pilgrims.
With its unfathomable throngs of devotees, the pageant has a grim monitor document of lethal crowd crushes. On January 29, a chaotic pre-dawn crowd surge killed a minimum of 30 individuals (archived link).
Unrelated footage
The circulating video of the previous man, nonetheless, was not filmed in the course of the Kumbh Mela because the false posts claimed.
A reverse picture search on Google of the video’s keyframes discovered it posted on YouTube on September 13, 2024 by a channel known as “Viken Kushwah Official” (archived link).
“Do not know by which kind God can be discovered,” the Hindi-language video caption learn.
Screenshot comparability of the video within the false put up (left) and the YouTube video (proper)
AFP reached out to the YouTube channel’s proprietor Viken Kushwah, who recognized the monk as Siyaram Baba (archived link).
Kushwah described himself as a devotee of Siyaram Baba and has shared lots of of movies of him along with his 1.4 million subscribers (archived link).
He mentioned he filmed the footage within the monk’s monastery on the banks of the Narmada River in Khargone district of central Madhya Pradesh state.
AFP confirmed the placement of the video by evaluating a shrine seen within the clip to a picture of the monastery geotagged on Google Maps (archived link).
Screenshot comparability between a scene from the YouTube video (left) and a picture geotagged on Google Maps (proper) with the identical shrine highlighted by AFP
Whereas AFP was not in a position to independently confirm the monk’s age, the Occasions of India reported that he died on December 11, 2024 aged 94 (archived link).
AFP beforehand debunked a wave of misinformation round Kumbh Mela.
