Old Video From Madurai's Chithirai Festival Shared as 2022 Jagannath Rath Yatra

The video showed devotees at the Chithirai festival held in Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple in Madurai.

A video showing a huge crowd pulling a chariot is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows the annual Jagannath Rath Yatra of 2022 held in Odisha's Puri.

The annual Rath Yatra of the holy trinity – Lord Balabhadra, Devi Subhadra, and Lord Jagannath – began on 1 July. After a hiatus of two years due to COVID-19, the Rath Yatra was taken out this year in Puri.

However, we could trace the video back to 2018, and the video showed the annual festival Chithirai Thiruvizha held at the Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple in Madurai.

CLAIM

The video is being shared along with the claim that it shows the Jagannath Rath Yatra in Puri, and crores of devotees have come to pull the chariot.

Archived links of similar posts can be seen here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We looked closely at the text that can be seen in the hoardings and found that it was in Tamil.

With the help of The Quint's reporter, we were able to identify that the video was from an annual festival known as Chithirai Thiruvizha, held in Madurai.

Next, we looked with keywords on YouTube and found the same video posted on a channel in 2018.

The titled mentioned that it was the 'Chithirai Thiruvizha' festival from 2018.

The same video was posted on other YouTube channels in 2018 and can be seen here and here.

Next, we checked for more videos about the festival and found a video on BBC Tamil which showed a similar looking chariot.

News reports about the festival were carried in The Hindu and The New Indian Express, where one can also see the same chariot.

Further, we also reached out to a Madurai-based freelance journalist named Gokul Vannan B who confirmed to The Quint that it is the annual Chithirai festival held at the Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple in Madurai.

Clearly, an old video of a religious festival from Madurai is being shared on social media with the false claim that is shows the 2022 Jagannath Rath Yatra.

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