Jagan Mohan Reddy Hasn’t Converted to Hinduism, Video is Unrelated

A old video has been falsely shared as Jagan Mohan Reddy converting from Christianity to Hinduism .

A viral video on social media falsely claimed that Jagan Mohan Reddy has converted from Christianity to Hinduism.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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CLAIM

A viral video on social media claims that Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has converted from Christianity to Hinduism. The claim along with the video reads: ‘Jagan Reddy is reconverted from *Christianity to Hinduism* by Swarupanamda Saraswati . The Swami fixed the date of his swearing in ceremony on May 30 th.’

Several social media users have shared it on Facebook with a similar claim.

The video is viral on Facebook.

TRUE OR FALSE?

The claim is false. This is an old video from 2016 when Jagan Mohan Reddy had performed a Hindu ritual called ‘Homam’ in Rishikesh. He had performed this ritual for getting Andhra Pradesh a special status.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We did a frame-to-frame analysis using InVID, a video verification tool, and then reverse-searched each frame on Yandex. This led us to post that reads: ‘YS Jagan @ Rishikesh: Performs Pooja for Special Status’

The reverse image search led us to a post that claimed that Reddy was performing a special pooja.

Then, we ran a search on YouTube using keywords ‘Jagan,’ ‘Rishikesh,’ ‘Pooja’ and ‘special status.’ This led us to a video that was shared by Sakshi TV on 9 August 2016.

A video by Sakshi TV shows that Reddy was performing a pooja in 2016.

This video has visuals from the viral video and claims that Reddy was performing a special pooja in Rishikesh to secure special category status for Andhra Pradesh. In another video posted by Sakshi TV, the special pooja that he is performing is Homam, a Hindu ritual.

As per NDTV, on 6 April 2019, when asked about the Congress, Reddy had said, "I believe in God. I pray to God. I read the Bible every day. Vengeance is not for me. I am forgiving and I have forgiven."

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