That’s Not a Temple Discovered During ‘Road Widening’ in Ayodhya

Image of an under-construction structure resembling a temple is being shared on internet with a claim that it is from Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

An image of a temple is being shared on the internet with the claim that it is from Ayodhya, where a 5,000-year-old temple was found during a road widening exercise.

However, we found that contrary to the viral claim, the image is from the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor Project site in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

CLAIM

The aforementioned image is massively viral on Facebook and Twitter and is being shared with a claim which reads: “This is told to be 5,000 years old temple dis’Covered’ while road widening in Ayodhya - 'The Ram Janma Bhoomi'. Locals had built house upon this beautiful temple which ‘Covered' the temple all these while. Sources say many more temples will be uncovered in coming days. (sic)“

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.

An archived version of the tweet can be accessed here. 

WHAT WE FOUND

We glanced at the comments section of the viral post and saw several people suggesting that the image is from Varanasi.

Next, we ran a reverse image search on the said image and found a Facebook post which mentioned that the image is from Kashi (Varanasi).

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.

We then looked up ‘Kashi Vishwanath Temple’ on Google and found a report by Hindi daily, Amar Ujala which carried a similar image on 5 January 2020. According to the report, the image is from the construction site of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor Project in Varanasi.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the image carried by Amar Ujala and the viral image.

We also reached out to a local reporter who confirmed that the image is from Varanasi.

Clearly, an image of an under-construction temple in Varanasi is being shared with a false claim that it shows a temple discovered during road widening in Ayodhya.

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