Fact Check: Photo showing miserable living conditions in Indian slums is from Bangladesh

Hyderabad: Several Facebook users have shared a photo that they claim shows the miserable living conditions in Indian slums. The photo shows children living inside sewage pipes.

A post in Malayalam accompanies the photo and reads, "Alas, this is the view of the Indian streets where the temple for Rama is being built. I bow my head thinking of my country."

Archived claim can be found here.

FACT CHECK:

The claim that the photo of people living inside sewage pipes is from an Indian slum is FALSE.

NewsMeter performed a reverse image search and found that this picture was taken by photographer Faisal Azim who won the Atkins Cityscape Award in 2014.

The image was featured in The Guardian's Atkins CIWEN environmental photographer of the year 2014 winners list on 26 June 2014. According to the article, the image titled "Life in the circle" was captured in 2013 in Bangladesh.

Several websites like the Daily Mail, My Green Pod, and Amateur Photographer, had published the award-winning photograph.

Kanchan Gupta, a journalist, also identified this photo as Faisal Azim's and tweeted, "I'd request Ms @AzmiShabana to give due credit to the photographer: Faisal Azim of Bangladesh. This photograph fetched him the Atkins CIWEM Award in 2014. [The photograph is of shantydwellers in Dhaka who lost their homes after a fire destroyed their shanties in 2014.] https://t.co/Qm0BIITm6a (sic)."

Hence, the image of homeless people living in drainage pipes is NOT from India. It was taken in Bangladesh by award-winning photographer Faisal Azim.