Nandi Idol Found While Digging a Mosque? No, That's a Temple!

The image is from Tamil Nadu and the idol was found during reconstruction work at the Sellandiamman temple.

An image of Hindu deity Nandi's idol is being shared with the false claim that it was found while digging a mosque.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Video Editor: Puneet Bhatia

An image of Hindu deity Nandi's (sacred bull of lord Shiva) idol is being shared on social media with the claim that it was found while digging a mosque.

However, we found that the claim is misleading as the idol was discovered but not while digging a mosque, but during the reconstruction work at the Sellandiamman temple in Tamil Nadu's Namakkal district.

Claim

The claim along with the image reads: "हर मजार मस्जिद की यही सच्चाई है (Translated: This is the truth of every mosque.)

The image tweeted by user 'Rajiv Tuli' had garnered over 2,800 retweets and 10,000 likes at the time of writing the article.

You can view the archived version here.

(Source: Twitter/ Screenshot)

Several social media users shared the image on Facebook and Twitter with a similar claim and the archived version of the posts can be viewed here, here and here.

What We Found Out

On conducting a reverse image search along with relevant keywords, we came across a tweet shared from 4 September that carried the viral image and suggested that it is from a temple in Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu.

A tweet suggested that the photo is from a temple in Tamil Nadu.

(Source: Twitter/ Screenshot)

We then searched on Google with keywords 'Namakkal Nandi temple' that led us to an article by news outlet Puthiyathalaimurai published on 5 September.

As per the report, a Nandi idol was found during the reconstruction work at the Sellandiamman temple. "An ancient Nandi idol was found buried in the ground while digging a ditch in front of the temple to build a perimeter wall," the article noted.

Further, revenue officials have reportedly instructed the archaeologists to investigate how old the idol is.

One can see visuals similar to the viral image in a bulletin uploaded by the media outlet on their YouTube handle.

Another media outlet Dinamalar, too, carried a report that corroborated the aforementioned details.

Evidently, social media users falsely claimed that a Nandi statue was found while digging a mosque.

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