Video of men demolishing religious site in Guntur shared with communal spin

Hyderabad: A video showing a group of men attacking a religious place and trying to demolish it is doing the rounds of social media. It is claimed that it shows a temple in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.

A Facebook user shared the video with the claim that Muslims are destroying Hindu temples.

Nowadays, it has become a common and easy practice to give a communal angle to a story to add some extra tadka to any news or event. Let's see if this viral video is based on a true event or if it is just a product of extra tadka.

FACT CHECK

NewsMeter performed a reverse image search using the keyframes on Invid. It led us to an India Today report that carried images of the same event. According to the report, "Tensions rose in Andhra's Guntur after a few people tried to demolish a dargah to construct a mosque. Locals protested against this, after which police officials intervened and diffused the situation. Officials say that the situation is now peaceful."

This confirms that NO TEMPLE was harmed by anyone. Rather it was a dargah that was demolished in order to replace it with a mosque.

For further confirmation, we ran a keyword search and found a tweet by Sunil Deodhar, the national secretary of BJP and co-in-charge of Andhra Pradesh. He had tweeted a video with similar visuals and said the video was from Guntur, AP.

Y. Satya Kumar, the national secretary of BJP and in charge of Andaman & Nicobar, had tweeted the same video and said it was from Guntur.

We also found a report by The New Indian Express on the incident. It said, "Some unidentified persons reportedly attempted to demolish Bhaji Bhasha Nishani Dargah in LR Nagar in Guntur. On October 12, a few persons tried to demolish the dargah using hammers when the locals intervened and stopped them. According to sources, people belonging to all communities have been offering prayers at the dargah for the past 40 years."

The report quoted the Lalapet police station circle inspector Prabhakar as saying, "We have informed about the issue to revenue officials to check the land particulars and the rightful owner of the land. Until the issue is resolved, the dargah will be closed."

This confirms that the goons were trying to destroy Bhaji Bhasha Nishani Dargah in LR Nagar in Guntur and not a temple. There is no communal spin here. Hence, the claim is misleading.