Fact Check: Viral rare pictures not of Sant Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon

New Delhi (Vishvas News): Vishvas News came across a few viral pictures being shared on WhatsApp claimed to be rare pictures of Sant Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon.
Vishvas News in its investigation found the pictures to be of Shri Bhalchandra Maharaj and not Shegaon’s Gajanan Maharaj.

According to the legend and documented history, Sant Gajanan Maharaj first appeared at Shegaon, a village in Buldhana district, Maharashtra as a young man at age of 30 probably during 23 February 1878. He attained Sanjeevana Samadhi on September 8, 1910. People visit Shegaon to seek the blessings of Sant Gajanan Maharaj.

Claim:

Four pics were going viral on WhatsApp said to be rare pics of Shegaon’s Gajanan Maharaj.

These pics have also gone viral in the past on Facebook.

The caption on the image read: शेगावच्या गजानन महाराजांचे दुर्मिळ छायाचित्र जास्तीत जास्त लोकांपर्यंत नाविक शेअर करा….
तुमची देवाकडे जी ईच्छा असेल ती पुर्ण होईल…

Translation: This is a rare picture of Shegaon’s Gajanan Maharaj, share it with maximum people. Whatever you wish for will come true.

Check the post and the archive version here.

Investigation:

Vishvas News started its investigation with simple keyword search using Facebook as search engine.

We started searching for rare pictures of Shegaon’s Sant Gajanan Maharaj and came across a detailed Facebook post that called out the viral pictures.

The post in Marathi said that this was not Shegaon’s Gajanan Maharaj but, Shri Bhalchandra Maharaj of Kankavli.

We found a few pictures on the Parmhans Bhalchandra Maharaj website.

We also found a few pics on a website that had rare pictures of Sant Gajanan Maharaj of Shegaon.

In the next step of investigation we contacted, Satchidanand Shevde a noted historian. He confirmed that the viral images were not of Sant Gajanan Maharaj but of Shri Bhalchandra Maharaj of Kankavli.

In the last step of investigation, Vishvas News conducted a social background check of Ashok Shivpura who posted the picture. The user is a resident of Pune and has 3.9K friends on Facebook.