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| - Fact Check: Video of crowd at seer's funeral procession FASELY shared as Chandrababu Naidu rally
Several people on social media have shared a video of a massive rally, claiming it was from Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu's roadshow in Kuppam. AFWA's investigation, however, found the video to be unrelated.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is from the funeral procession of Siddeshwar Swami, the seer of the Jnanayogashrama who died on January 3, 2023, in Karnataka’s Vijayapura district.
Former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu has been holding a series of political rallies across the state in preparation for the 2024 Assembly Elections in the state. Naidu’s rallies gained national attention after 11 people died in two different incidents of stampedes during his roadshows.
High tension prevailed in Naidu’s native constituency Kuppam in Chittoor district on January 4 after Andhra Pradesh police prevented the TDP supremo from participating in a road show there. Police reportedly resorted to mild lathi-charge and seized Naida’s campaign vehicle. Following this, he resumed the roadshow on foot.
Following this, several people on social media have shared a video of a massive rally with the claim that it was from Naidu’s roadshow in Kuppam. “Grand welcome to #NaraChandrababuNaidu kuppam people,” read the caption to one such video. The archived versions of a similar post can be seen here.
AFWA’s investigation, however, found that the video is from the funeral procession of Siddeshwar Swami, a seer from Sri Jnanayogashrama in Karnataka. It is not related to Naidu’s political rally.
AFWA probe
We noticed a few people on social media pointing out that the video was from Siddeshwar Swami’s antim yatra or funeral procession. As per media reports, Siddeshwar Swami, a prominent Lingayat seer from Jnanayogashrama died on January 3 in the Vijayapura district of Karnataka.
The same video was tweeted by a person on January 4. As per this tweet, the video was from Siddeshwar Swami’s funeral procession.
We then shared the video with Kannada daily Vartha Bharati’s district reporter from Vijayapura, Asif Hussain. The journalist confirmed to us that the video is from Mahatma Gandhi Circle in Vijayapura.
Speaking to AFWA, Hussain said, “Lakhs of people had gathered to pay their respect to the seer. His mortal remains was brought in a procession from Sainik School ground to Jnanayogashrama where the last rites were performed. The procession passed through the Mahatma Gandhi Circle, the same place that’s seen in the viral video.”
We also compared the video with the Street View of the Mahatma Gandhi Circle on Google Maps. We were able to identify the central library building which can be seen at the end of the road throughout the video. We also geolocated a commercial building that appeared around 30 seconds into the video.
It is hence clear that the video in question is from the funeral procession of a seer from Karnataka. It has nothing to do with the road shows organised by Naidu in Andhra Pradesh.
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