Mangaluru: An official of Mangalore diocese has dismissed as fake some videos and images on alleged attacks on churches in the wake of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the just concluded assembly elections in Karnataka state.
“No attacks on any church in Mangalore have taken place till Thursday (May 17) morning. The video going around on social media is very old, nearly ten years old. This is incorrect information,” Marcel Monteiro, public relations officer of the Mangalore diocese, told boomlive.in.
Mangaluru Police Commissioner Vipul Kumar asserted that no incident reported of vandalizing or attack on any religious structure has taken place. “No church was attacked in the city or in the outskirts. Such an incident would have definitely reached the ears of the police force. This rumor is the work of some miscreants,” he added.
One social media post claims that BJP and Sangh cadres attacked a church in Mangaluru and tried to plant BJP flags to celebrate the party’s victory. The video was posted to Twitter on May 16.
However, a fact-check revealed that the video is nearly ten years old and shows the outer facade of Saint Sebastian church in Permannur, Mangaluru. A YouTube clip with TV9’s logo shows similar visuals of police rounding up people and making them sit on the ground, as seen in the tweet.
The video was taken when Hindu radicals allegedly vandalized two dozen churches and several Christian prayer halls in Udupi, Chikmagalur and Dakshina Kannada districts during August-September 2008.
The attacks occurred after the BJP, led by BS Yeddyurappa, came to power in Karnataka. While a fact-finding commission set up by the BJP state government to investigate the attacks exonerated Bajarang Dal activists, the Congress government that came to power in 2013 rejected the commission’s report.
Facebook displays another clip showing police storm St Sebastian church. However, the same sequence of events can be seen in an Al Jazeera news report from 2008.
A separate image showing supporters of the BJP in front of another church are also being circulated on social media. The image is being shared with an implied context that the celebrations were intended to send a message to the local Christian community.
Through a Google Image search boomalive.in could confirm that the picture was of Saint Lawrence Church in Bondel, Mangaluru.
Monteiro said while supporters of the party were near church premises no untoward incident took place. “The BJP workers had burst some crackers in front of the St Lawrence Church gate on the day of the election verdict but no trouble was created,” he clarified.
A third image claims to show that the Christian community in Karnataka has built a ‘Lingayat Church.’ However, the image is poorly photoshopped and even misspells the word ‘Lingayat’ adding the alphabet ‘h’ to it.
A Google Reverse Image search traced the photo to a blog called ‘Beautiful Indian Churches’ which revealed that the photo is actually of Our Lady of Dolours church in Dahanu, Maharashtra. The images of the church were posted to the blog in 2012.
This is not the first time fake news linking ‘Lingayats and Christians’ has surfaced. Earlier two fake letters alleged a sinister conspiracy to convert Lingayats in the state to Catholicism.