A video showing Lord Ram's hologram on a clock tower is viral online with the false claim that the video is from Lal Chowk, Srinagar.
BOOM found that the video is from Dehradun, Uttarakhand, and not Jammu and Kashmir.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to inaugurate the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22. As devotees across the country look forward to the opening of the temple, opposition leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge and the four main religious heads or Shankaracharyas have refused to attend the event. While the opposition claims that the inauguration has been reduced to a BJP-RSS event, the religious heads have taken objection over doing the Pran Pratishtha ceremony at an incomplete temple.
The 48-seconds video shows a person driving by the clock tower with Lord Ram's image on it. The vehicles moves ahead and towards the side of the street, a screen playing songs about Lord Ram is seen.
A caption on Facebook reads, "Lal Chowk, Srinagar. Can you imagine a sight like this in Srinagar. Jai Shri Ram 🚩🚩🚩जय श्री राम 🙏 "
Click here to view the post.
The post is being shared with a similar caption on X.
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the viral claims are false; the video is from Dehradun, Uttarakhand, and not Srinagar's Lal Chowk.
We ran a reverse image search of some seen in the viral video on Google and found several posts indicating that the clock tower was from Dehradun. See here and here.
Taking a clue from this, we ran a search for the clock tower on Google Maps and found that it was located near Dehradun's Paltan Bazar. Below is a comparison between the viral video and the street view near the clock tower in Dehradun:
This street view from June 2022 shows a gaming lounge, Smaaash, under construction in the background of the clock tower. Smaaash opened in Dehradun in November 2023, and the viral video shot this month shows it as operational.
Below is a comparison between the viral video and the street view.
We also found that the clock tower in Srinagar's Lal Chowk is distinct from the clock tower shown in the viral video.