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| - Famed superstition debunker Sanal Edamaruku investigated and found the water dripping from the statue was leakage from a nearby sewage pipe. This, in turn, led to his exile to Europe after Catholic groups brought charges against him for allegedly violating India's "Blasphemy Laws."
The claim specifically ascribes the leaking water to a "clogged toilet," a detail that could not yet be verified with a primary source. Snopes has reached out to Edamaruku to learn more.
A claim that a statue of Jesus Christ in Mumbai, India, mysteriously began dripping holy water from its feet, causing some to believe it was a divine miracle, circulated online in November 2024.
According to a Reddit post, believers began to collect and even ingest the water, only for it to later be shown to be the result of a clogged toilet.
One user commenting on the Reddit thread said, "To be fair, that water was almost surely imbued with the miracle of life. Microbial life, yes, but it was imbued."
This claim has circulated previously, including in a post on X in April 2024 and multiple Reddit threads from 2019, prompting a user to comment, "Full of vitamins B and M."
(Sad_Stay_5471 on Reddit)
While the claim that the occurrence was a miracle was debunked when the water was proven to be leaking sewage water is true, we've rated this as a mixture of true and undetermined because the leak was allegedly the result of a clogged toilet, but we have not yet been able to independently verify this specific detail with a primary source.
However, the events surrounding the Jesus statue in Mumbai were widely covered by the media back in 2012, primarily due to the controversial aftermath of the debunking.
When the statue outside the Church of Our Lady of Velankanni in Mumbai began drawing the attention of Catholics as a potential miracle site, Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku was asked to investigate for a segment on India's TV9.
In a 2012 interview with New Scientist, a weekly science and technology publication, Edamaruku explained his findings.
I had a close look at a nearby washroom and the connected drainage system that passed underneath the concrete base of the cross. I removed some stones from the drain and found it was blocked. I touched the walls, the base and the cross and took some photographs for documentation. It was very simple: water from the washroom, which had been blocked in the clogged drainage system, had been transmitted via capillary action into the adjacent walls and the base of the cross as well as into the wooden cross itself. The water came out through a nail hole and ran down over the statue's feet.
Edamaruku was a known debunker at the time, having previously made headlines for challenging a Hindu fakir who claimed he could "kill anybody with tantric chanting" to do so on live television.
According to the BBC:
As both were guests in the studio, the fakir was put to the test immediately.
The channel cancelled all subsequent programming and he began chanting on the spot. But as the hours passed a note of desperation crept into his raspy mantras. For his part, Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, showed no sign of discomfort, let alone death. He merely chortled his way through this unconventional (and unsuccessful) attempt on his life.
The same BBC report also mentioned Edamaruku's activities in the 1990s when "Edamaruku visited hundreds of villages replicating the apparently fabulous feats some self-proclaimed holy men became renowned for — the materialisations of watches or 'holy' ash — exposing them as mere sleight of hand."
Despite his past experience in debunking religious miracles, his appearance on TV9 sparked outrage from Catholic organizations in India, and they filed charges against him, citing Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which outlines a punishment of "imprisonment… for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both" for "Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs."
Fearing prosecution, Edamaruku fled to Europe in 2012 and has lived there ever since. He told The Guardian at the time, "The Catholic archbishop of Bombay, Oswald, Cardinal Gracias, has said that if I apologise for the 'offence' I have caused he will see to it that the charges are dropped. This shows that he has influence in the situation but he will not use it unless I apologise, which I will not do as I have done nothing wrong."
In 2013, he told the public radio program "The World," "I never ever believed that such a thing would happen in India. I never, ever thought that doing something to promote scientific temper and educate people against superstition would be taken as a crime in India."
Snopes reached out to Edamaruku to verify the specifics of the story, including the claim that the leak was caused by a clogged toilet, and will update this article and its rating if and when we learn more.
Snopes has fact-checked many reports of so-called miracles, including a Jesus statue allegedly opening its eyes, a church being physically moved by the hand of God and spilled salt forming an image of Jesus.
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