Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on the internet where a man was seen walking on his hands and doing a parikrama of Kedarnath temple. The 3 minute 47 seconds video claimed that the person seen in the video was Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, after investigation, it was found that the person seen in the video is a Kedarnath priest.
Claim:
Facebook user देशप्रेमी जगदीश चन्द्र shared the video on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the video with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained.
We found a clear video on the Facebook page ताजा खबर uploaded on 5 August, 2021. The video was being shared with the false claim too. But the video was clear. The text on the video said, ‘Created by श्री केदारनाथ ज्योतिर्लिंग’.
We then ran a Google keyword search using the search term, “parikrama on hands around Kedarnath temple”.
This led us to a video posted by India Tv on YouTube over 3 years ago.
The caption said: Kedarnath Temple priest walks on his hands on International Yoga Day.
The video was also carried by Kanak News.
We found that the videos were taken from ANI and the name of the priest is Santosh Trivedi.
Since the text on the clear video said, “Created by श्री केदारनाथ ज्योतिर्लिंग”, we searched for Facebook pages and groups titled, “श्री केदारनाथ ज्योतिर्लिंग” and also used a combination of keyword search for Facebook.
We found the video posted on one page titled, श्री केदारनाथ ज्योतिर्लिंग which had 1.4 million followers.
The caption mentioned that the person seen in the video doing parikrama is Aacharya Santosh Trivedi.
Conclusion: Video of Kedarnath temple priest Santosh Trivedi doing a parikrama by walking on his hands has gone viral claiming that the person seen in the video is Indian PM Narendra Modi. Viral claim is false.
