Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statue was not damaged in Wayanad. It was damaged in Vedaranyam town in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu.

On 3^rd September 2019 a Facebook user named Rani Arora shared a video in her post. Somewhere in the video a statue of a famous man has been shown. The video shows that status of a famous person is being destroyed by the people. The description of the post says “In Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency Wayanad, peacemakers broke Ambedkar’s statue and broke the unity of Bhima and Meem.”

Note- Personally, we strongly condemn such unconstitutional acts.  

It has been claimed in this post that in Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency Wayanad the statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar was damaged.  But when we saw the video closely, we found Tamil language written on the boards of the shops at the venue. This made us suspicious that the video is from Wayanad.  

Let us find out the truth in the video

Read full post here –‘Rani Arora’| ARCHIVE POST

First of all we conducted Reverse Image Search for the key frames of the shared video with the help InVid Tools. As a result on Google, we found a link of YouTube. A user named 4-Star News uploaded a video on 26^th August 2019 and this video is quiet similar to the video shared in the post. In the title of the video it was written Ambedkar statue damaged in Vedaranyam. You can see the video below. 

After this, we used the keywords ‘Ambedkar statue damaged in Vedaranyam’    to search on YouTube. As a result, we got the same video uploaded on the official channel of many news agencies regarding this news. It has been said in the news that the incident took place in Vedaranyam town located in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu state.  Below, you can see the video of the News Agency ‘ANI’ uploaded by ‘Free Press Journal’ on 26^th August 2019. This incident took place on 25^th August.

Apart from this we found this video uploaded by BBC News and Kanak News and it has been said that this incident took place in Vedaranyam city. After this, we found a video on YouTube. In the video, information about this incident has been provided by DIG IPS Loganathan of Thanjavur. This video was uploaded by TN Police on 24^th August 2019. You can see the video below. In this video, DIG Loganathan said “some people damaged the statue of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar after a clash between the Dalit and upper caste communities. The police took immediate action and arrested the people of both groups. At present, peace is prevailing in Vedaranyam”.

After this we spoke to Subhash Chandra Bose, Inspector of Police, at Vedaranyam Police Station in this context. He told us that this incident has happened in Vedaranyam itself. This matter is between the Dalit and the upper caste communities. No person from the Muslim community has been arrested in this incident. This makes it clear that the aforementioned incident is not about the destruction of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statue in Wayanad, Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency. This incident took place in Vedaranyam town in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu. No person from the Muslim community has been arrested in this case.

Conclusion

From our research it becomes clear that the claim made in the video shared in the above post “in Rahul Gandhi’s parliamentary constituency Wayanad, the statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar was damaged” is absolutely wrong. Dr. Ambedkar’s statue was not damaged in Wayanad. It was damaged in Vedaranyam town in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu.