Fact-Check: The truth behind the viral video of police obstructing Ganesh Puja in Kerala

On September 13,2021 a fake account of actress Payal Rohtagi posted a video of what looks like a Ganesh Chaturthi ritual being disrupted by police officers. The idol of Ganesh can also be seen being picked up. The video is captioned as below:

“This situation has happened in Kerala during Ganeshotsav for Hindus.

 Hindu cannot even celebrate their festival in their Hindustan“

It must be noted that the user of this account have themselves claimed that their own previous two handles were deleted by Twitter.

Another user by the name of Sardhar Pavan Goud a BJP worker posted the video demanding justice.

Same video was even viral on other social media platforms like Facebook.

Fact-Check:

Upon reverse searching the key frames of this video, we found several Telegu reports on the incident that stated that the event took place in the Patabasti area of Hyderabad and not Kerala.

The reports state that the crowd was causing inconvenience to the residents of the area which is why they were picked up by the police along with the idol of Ganesh. However, the above mentioned users communalized the story without paying heed to the actual story. Hence this claim is misleading and fake.