Temple-Turned-COVID Facility in Guj Passed Off as One in Mumbai

The visuals show BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Atladara in Gujarat’s Vadodara being converted into a COVID facility.

A set of images are being shared to falsely claim that they show premises of Shri Swaminarayan temple being converted to a COVID-19 facility in Mumbai.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A set of images is being shared on social media to falsely claim that it shows premises of Shri Swaminarayan temple being converted to a COVID-19 facility in Mumbai. However, the visuals are actually from BAPS Swaminarayan temple in Atladara in Gujarat’s Vadodara.

CLAIM

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) National General Secretary BL Santhosh shared the images on Twitter with the claim: “Mumbai Sri Swamynarayan Mandir premises converted into COVID hospital. (sic)”

You can view the archived version here.(Source: Twitter/ Screenshot)

BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje, too, shared the images claiming that they are from Mumbai. Meanwhile, Congress leader and poet Imran Pratapgarhi tweeted the images with same claim as well.

Several Facebook users also shared the image with the same claim and the archived posts can be viewed here and here.

The Quint received a query on the claim being made in the images on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

WHAT WE FOUND

We conducted a reverse image search on the images and came across an article by Latestly that carried a bulletin uploaded by TV9 Gujarati.

The title of the bulletin mentioned that BAPS Swaminarayan temple converted a prayer meet hall into a COVID-19 centre in Vadodara’s Atladra in Gujarat.

We then compared the viral images with the structure seen in the TV9 Gujarati bulletin and found several similarities. For instance, in both the cases, we could see ‘Yagnapurush Sabhagruh’ written in Gujarati.

Further, we saw that an idol was placed in the exact same way in both the cases.

Left: Viral image. Right: TV9 Gujarati bulletin.(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

We also came across a Times of India article dated 15 April that mentioned that the BAPS Swaminarayan temple is running a 300-bed COVID-19 facility in Atladara.

(Source: Website/ Screenshot)

Evidently, a set of images from a COVID-facility in Gujarat were falsely claimed to be from Mumbai.

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