An image has gone viral on social media platforms depicting a little girl collecting oil from extinguished lamps on the occasion of Diwali at Ram ki Paudi in Ayodhya. Social media users are fiercely sharing this image and trying to attack implicitly the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh amid the Election season 2023.

Claim through the image

Sharing this picture on X(Twitter), the Official account of the organization ‘The Dalit Voice’ wrote; “Look at the fear in her eyes”

The image has garnered more than 1.5 lakh views on X(Twitter).

Other users also shared this image

We found that several users shared this image on X(Twitter) making similar claims.

Fact-Check

A reverse-image search of the viral image led us to know that it had created massive buzz on X(Twitter) and Meta (Facebook) three years back. In our investigation, we found that the image had been shared by many prominent users on social media platforms in the year 2019.

In 2019, President of Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav posted this on X(Twitter) and wrote: “Tell me what light you get from this The lamps are lit by those whose home stoves are extinguished”(English Translation).

General Secretary of Congress, Randeep Singh Surjeewala also shared this image in the year 2019 and claimed: “This is the truth which BJP cannot see! I wish this money had been spent to bring happiness on the face of this innocent child. Only then would Lord Ram’s Ayodhya glow with the lamp of happiness”(English Translation)

Moreover, by using this image, users tried to raise questions about the crores of rupees spent on Ayodhya.

After that, the image became a topic of hot debate on the Internet.

Upon further investigation, we discovered this image originally on a blog named ‘Giving is Gaining’ of an IT website ‘http://technotip.com‘ mentioning: Here A Poor Girl Trying To Collect A Little Oil From These Diyas To Take Home. I cried looking at her eyes. When she saw the camera, she was terrified by thinking her oil bottle would be snatched from her” in its description.   

The blog was based on requesting contributions for people who need educational materials and/or food(and medicine). Here, the image had been used to indicate the needy people.

Conclusion

It is clear from DFRAC’s Fact-Check that the image went viral in 2019 not recently. Moreover, it was originally posted on a Blog from where social media users picked up and took to social media sites such as x(Twitter) & and Meta and started making different claims.