Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms during the ten day Ganesha festival. It was being claimed along with the video that under the pressure from Congress administration, police did not allow offering prayers to Ganesha idol, this angered a Hindu and he taught a lesson to the policemen. During the investigation we found that the video was from Nagpur and the person seen in the video is NCP leader from the city Vedprakash Arya. The Ganesha idol shown here was in news due to its controversial design and was immersed before the festival ended.
Claim:
X user @maheshyagyasain shared the viral video on his profile with the misleading claim.
Check the archive version of the claim here.
Other users too are sharing the video with similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by checking the entire video, we saw a Ganesha idol at the end that looked a bit familiar. The idol was in news right from the start of the ten-day Ganesh festival.
We found a news report about the same on a local portal.
The report mentioned: Rudra Avatar Ganesh Mandal installed the idol in the Jaripatka area, several objections were raised because the idol had been prepared using the drainage pipes. As a result, the sentiments of many were hurt, leading to protests against the mandal, this led to immersion of the idol.
The idol was immersed on the fifth day of the festival. The mandal had installed an idol with the theme five elements but had used a drainage pipe as a trunk.
The report further mentioned: Later, one of the mandal members approached a politician who, without verifying facts, abused the police. The cops then booked the politician and also registered an FIR against the mandal members for hurting people’s religious sentiments.
Reports mention the name of the politician to be Vedprakash Arya. Vedprakash Arya is a former corporator and vice president and spokesperson of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Nagpur.
He was later granted bail in the case.
We also reached out to Nagpur DCP (Zone 5) Niketan Kadam for more details about the case, he told us, “Some organisation took objections to the design of the Ganesha idol, main issue for them was that the trunk was made up of a drainage pipe and they objected to the same. These organisations and the Ganesh mandal sat together and decided to immerse the idol on the fifth day and hence the police decided not to register any complaint against the mandal. The matter would have ended here since everything was sorted, but there was one member of the mandal who met with the local politician Vedprakash Arya and he misled him saying that there was nothing objectionable about the design and yet the mandal was being troubled. Without verifying the facts the leader also created a ruckus about the issue. The police then had to take action to maintain a law and order situation. Once Arya was in custody we asked him if he knew why the issue was being created to which he agreed that he was misled on the facts and that he didn’t know what the controversy was about.” Kadam also mentioned that the politician should have discussed the matter first before creating a ruckus in the area.
Conclusion: Viral video of Nagpur NCP leader Vedprakash Arya creating ruckus at a Ganesha mandal in Nagpur over controversial design of the Ganesha idol is being shared with misleading claims. Police did not stop devotees from offering prayers to the deity. Viral claim is misleading.
