Ahead of the consecration ceremony of the idol for the new Ram temple in Ayodhya on 22 January, a video of a stunning drone show has gone viral on social media.
What is the claim?: Those sharing the video have claimed that it shows a practice video for a drone show scheduled for the opening of the Ram temple in Uttar Pradesh's Ayodhya.
(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, and here.)
But...?: The claim is false. The video dates back to November 2023 and shows a drone show for the festival of Diwali, executed by Indian startup BotLab Dynamics.
How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a video verification extension on Google Chrome, and ran a reverse image search on them.
This led us to an Instagram video on an account 'BotLab Dynamics', shared on 12 November 2023.
It was shared with a caption which mentioned Diwali greetings and used hashtags related to Diwali.
Several social media users had shared BotLab's video in November 2023, when many Indians celebrated Diwali. You can see their posts here, here, and here.
According to their website, BotLab Dynamics' drone light shows programme anywhere between 100 to 3,500 drones to "fly in 3D space to make identifiable visual forms."
The company has worked on several projects, which include a show for the 2023 Indian Premier League opening ceremony and India's Army Day.
On their social media accounts, BotLab Dynamics has shared two posts related to the consecration ceremony at Ayodhya's Ram temple on 22 January.
However, they did not specify whether they will participate in the inauguration of the temple.
We have reached out the BotLab Dynamics for confirmation regarding the same and will update this article when a response is received.
Conclusion: A video of a drone light show from November 2023 is being incorrectly linked to the upcoming consecration ceremony of the idol at Ayodhya's Ram temple.
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