Fact Check: Video showing monkey checking files in an office is not from Ayodhya Ram temple
Ayodhya Ram temple has been in the news even after the consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla. With the newly inaugurated Ram temple witnessing a heavy rush of devotees from all over the country, the Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust has decided to study the best practices in crowd management adopted by the TTD.
Claim :
A monkey is checking the registration files in Ayodhya to know if the Ram Temple is registered or notFact :
The video shows a monkey entering a lawyer’s office in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Ayodhya Ram temple has been in the news even after the consecration ceremony of Ram Lalla. With the newly inaugurated Ram temple witnessing a heavy rush of devotees from all over the country, the Ram Janmabhoomi Teertha Kshetra Trust has decided to study the best practices in crowd management adopted by the TTD.
There had been a lot of false news surrounding the temple and the inauguration. Recently, a video of a monkey sitting in an office and going through files and documents is being shared with the claim that it is checking the registration status of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
The claim in Telugu goes “అయోధ్యలో రామ మందిరం పేరు రిజిస్ట్రేషన్ అయిందా లేదని చూస్తున్న హనుమంతుడు జై శ్రీరామ్”
When translated, it claims that the monkey (Hanuman) is checking whether the Ram Mandir is registered or not, in Ayodhya.
Fact check:
The claim is False. The video is not recent and is not from Ayodhya.
When we searched using the keyframes extracted from the video, we found a YouTube video published in October 2023 with the title ‘Trending I Monkey check files at Government office, ignores Bananas”
The video was also published by India Today on October 14, 2023, with the description “A video of a monkey ransacking files in an office in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, went viral on social media. The video shows a monkey sitting on a table, flipping through the pages of a register. People can be seen offering bananas to the monkey, but it refuses to take them.
According to initial inputs, there was speculation that this might be an office of a government agency in the Behat tehsil area. However, Saharanpur's Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Deepak Kumar clarified that the viral video is not from a government office. "The monkey had entered the chamber of a lawyer in the Behat tehsil area and was seated on a table," Kumar added. The ADM further said that the monkey was quite visible in the area and that he informed the Forest Department and police officials about the incident.
News 18 also reported the event and confirmed that it took place in Saharanpur, UP in October 2023.
Hence, the viral video is not recent and does not show a monkey going through the registration files of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. The video is old and shows a monkey entering the office of a lawyer and going through the files. The claim is False.
