Viral Photo of Shivalinga is From Farrukhabad Temple, Not Ayodhya

A photo of a Shivalinga is going viral with the claim that it was unearthed during excavations in Ayodhya at present and that it is the same one that Lord Ram worshipped.

However, we found that it is actually a Shivalinga that has existed in a temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad and has no relation whatsoever with Ayodhya.

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

CLAIM

The message being circulated with the photo is that this Shivalinga has been found in Ayodhya now, during excavations.

The photo with this claim is viral on Facebook and the post seen above had 12k likes and over 800 shares at the time this story was published.

Many others also shared the photo on Facebook with similar claims.

An archived version of the search results can be seen here.

The photo was also viral on Twitter.

An archived version of the tweet can be seen here.

An archived version of the results can be seen here.

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WHAT WE FOUND

On running a reverse image search on the photo in the posts, we came across an article by Hindi news outlet Amar Ujala from July 2016 which said that the Shivalinga belonged to a temple called Mathiya Devi Mandir in UP’s Farrukhabad.

According to the article, some renovation work in the temple in 2016 had brought to light the fact that a part of the Shivalinga had been underground so far.

The Quint then got in touch with a local reporter in UP’s Shahjahanpur, a town close to Farrukhabad, who said that the Shivalinga indeed belonged to the Mathiya Devi Temple, which had existed since the British era and that the news of a part of the Shivalinga being discovered underground in 2016 was true.

“This has existed in the Mathiya Devi Mandir and has nothing to do with Ayodhya,” he told us, adding that the linga was in fact 250 years old.

According to Hindustan Times, land-levelling work has indeed been going on at the Ram Janmabhoomi site in Ayodhya, having started on 11 May. Many artefacts have been found at the site. However, the Shivalinga, whose photo is being shared was not found at this site at all but belongs to a temple in Farrukhabad.

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(With inputs from SM Hoaxslayer.)

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