On 21 May, the General Secretary of the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirth Kshetra Trust - Champak Rai, confirmed that several ancient idols were found during the land levelling exercise at the Ram Mandir site in Ayodhya.
Soon after unrelated images started doing rounds on social media with claims that they show the idols and carvings which were excavated.
Users on social media are sharing an old image from Jilinga village in Jharkhand to claim that it shows idols of Ram and Sita recovered from the temple site in Ayodhya.
THE CLAIM
The image is being circulated on Facebook with claim that says, “Ayodhya Mein Khudai karte samay Ram Lakshman Janki Jay bolo Hanuman ki Murti pagae jai shree ram.”
[Translation: Ram, Laxman and Sita idols were found during excavation in Ayodhya. All hail lord Ram and lord Hanuman.]
The post shared by one Raja Singh on Facebook has been shared more than 600 times.
WHAT WE FOUND
A Google reverse image search directed us to an article by a website called The Analyst which carried the image.
The article mentioned that idols of Ram, Laxman and Sita were found in a village in Jharkhand’s Khunti district.
Taking a cue from here, we carried out a Google search using keywords “Ram and Sita Idols found in Jharkhand” and found a news report detailing the incident. According to the report, the idols were found by people in Jilinga village in Bhadra Panchayat of Khunti district of Jharkhand in January 2019.
The Quint reached out to the office of Khunti’s SDM (Sub Divisional Magistrate), where officials corroborated these details and confirmed the image is indeed from Jilinga village.
Clearly, an old image from Jharkhand is being circulated in light of the recent developments at the Ram Mandir site in Ayodhya.
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