Fact Check: Photoshopped image of the Golden Temple is going viral

New Delhi (Team Vishvas): People are sharing a picture of Golden Temple of Amritsar on social media these days where the Sikh shrine can be seen decorated with lights. A large number of people can be seen lighting diyas and candles outside the Golden Temple. Also, thousands of paper lanterns can be seen floating in the sky. The post claims that this picture is of Diwali celebration at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. We found in our investigation that this picture is photoshopped. The photo has been tempered with. The paper lanterns have been added with the use of editing tools. The real picture is old when thousands of lamps and candles were lit by people outside the Golden Temple (Golden Temple) on the occasion of Diwali.

CLAIM

In the viral picture, the Golden Temple of Amritsar can be seen decorated with lights. A large number of people in the photo are lighting diyas and candles outside the Golden Temple. Also, thousands of paper lanterns can be seen floating in the sky. The description with the post reads, “Diwali celebrations at India’s ✨ Golden Temple, Harmandir Sahib.”

FACT CHECK

To investigate this post, we first took a screenshot of this picture and searched it on Google reverse image. We found that a large number of people have been sharing this picture since 2017. In 2017, this picture was also retweeted by Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan.

After a bit of investigation, we found a travel blog of a photographer named Emily Polar on a website called World Nomads. Emily Polar uploaded many photos and wrote about them in this photo blog. The entire story was about the Golden Temple. The tenth image on this page resembles the viral picture, where people can be seen lighting diyas and candles. The Golden Temple in the photo is also decorated in the same way as in the viral picture. However, the paper lanterns are missing in Emily’s picture. This travel blog was uploaded on 20 July 2018. The caption of this particular picture was, “People lighting lamps and candles at the campus of Golden Temple on the occasion of Diwali.”

We also found this picture on Emily Polar’s blog with © ELILYPOLAR2015 watermarked on it. This suggests that this picture could be of 2015. We have emailed Emily Polar for further confirmation. This story will be updated as soon as she reverts.

Photo credit of the viral picture has been given to Navkaran Brar. After a bit of searching, we found that this viral picture was first uploaded on 20 October 2017 by a Twitter handle named Navkaran Brar. The caption with this picture was ‘# HappyDiwali2017 #goldentemple picart by me if you are going to post this then please give proper credit🙏🏼 #amritsar (Copyright).” As a reply on this tweet, a person commented that this image is photoshoped. To which Navkaran had replied – “Yes, this is really a photoshopped picture. I made it by putting some pictures together. Its purpose is not to make anyone mad, but to create art.” People started sharing this picture out of context.

We spoke to Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee spokesperson Kulwinder Singh on this issue. He said that this picture is of Gurudwara Shri Harmandir Sahib but it has been edited and paper lanterns have been pasted on top with the use of editing tools. Often on many occasions people light lamps of ghee, but the practice of paper lanterns is not yet here. ”

Many people are sharing this post. One of them is a Facebook page called Places to Visit Before You Die. This page has 738,653 Facebook followers.

Conclusion: We found in our investigation that this picture is photoshopped. The photo has been tempered with. The paper lanterns have been added with the use of editing tools. The real picture is old when thousands of lamps and candles were lit by people outside the Golden Temple (Golden Temple) on the occasion of Diwali.