Video of a Fire in Srinagar Shared as Temple Burnt Down in Shopian

The video shared with a false claim was from Srinagar’s Parimpora locality and not Shopian.

Fact-Check | The video of structures on fire was from Parimpora, Srinagar and not Shopian district of Kashmir.

(Photo: The Quint)

The video showing smokes rising from some structures that are on fire has been shared by several people on social media with a claim that the footage shows a temple being burnt in Zainpora town in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir.

The claim comes in the backdrop of recent killings of seven civilians in the union territory.

However, we found that the footage shows a fire that broke out in a residential area of Parimpora, which is in the outskirts of Srinagar district of J&K.

Several news reports from the union territory documented the blaze that engulfed more than 40 homes on 7 October, but none of them mentioned there being a temple. We also spoke with Sanjay Tickoo, president of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangaresh Samithi (KPSS), who dismissed the claims made in the video.

CLAIM

Sharing the 32 seconds long video, users said, "[A] temple situated at zainpora shopian(Kashmir) burnt by some unknown person".

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/Screenshot)

Similar claims were shared by many more users on Facebook and Twitter, archives of which can be found here, here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

To check the authenticity of the video, we extracted some keyframes from the clip using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

This led us to a tweet on DD News Srinagar. The tweet carried a screenshot of the viral video and said, "Approximately 20 sheds gutted in a massive fire at Parimpora locality in Srinagar".

The tweet, however, didn't mention anything about a temple being burnt.

Taking a cue from the tweet, we conducted a keyword search for instances of fire in Srinagar and found several other news reports published on 7 October that talked about the incident.

According to the reports, at least 40 structures, including some temporary sheds, were burnt in a blaze that broke out in the outskirts of the Parimpora area in Srinagar.

A report in Global News Service (GNS) included quotes from a Fire and Emergency official, who said that while the exact cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained, but it was believed that it might have been caused by a short circuit.

The Quint's WebQoof team also spoke with the president of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti (KPSS), Sanjay Tickoo, who dismissed the claims made along with the viral video. He also told us that he had not heard of any Hindu temple being set on fire in recent times in any part of J&K.

We also contacted the Zainapora police station and they confirmed to us that no temple was set on fire in the area and said that the claim with the viral video was false.

However, in a separate incident, some miscreants desecrated idols in an ancient temple in south Kashmir's Anantnag district on 2 October. An enquiry has already been ordered into the matter.

Evidently, a video of a fire that broke out in Parimpora, Srinagar has been shared with a false claim that it shows a Hindu temple being burnt down in Zainapora area of Shopian district in Kashmir.

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