Old photo of a Drone strapped to a Hanuman idol shared as a picture of real Hanuman flying in sky - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
December 13, 2022
A photo is being shared on social media claiming that Lord Hanuman was still alive and was spotted flying in the sky by people. Sharing the photo, this post claims it to be the picture of Lord Hanuman flying in the sky. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Picture showing Lord Hanuman flying in the sky.
Fact: The photo shared in the post shows a drone-strapped 3D idol of Hanuman that was hovered over nine cities as part of a television show promotion in 2015. A Mumbai-based marketing company performed this drone show to promote their TV mythological show ‘Sankatmochan Mahabali Hanuman’. The video does not show a real Hanuman flying in the sky. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same picture is found as a thumbnail image to a YouTube video published with the title, “When the real Hanumanji was captured in the drone camera of the people” (when translated from Hindi to English). But in the video, there are no visuals of Hanuman flying in the sky. Also, in the photo shared in the post, one could see a drone-like structure attached to the top of the hanuman idol.
When we searched for further sources using relevant keywords on the internet, we found similar visuals of Hanuman like being flying in the sky in a video published by a YouTube channel on 02 May 2015. RJ Navneet published this video with the title, “Pawan Putra Hanuman (Drone ) Flying in the Sky of Indore”. This video shows a drone-strapped Hanuman idol flying in the sky. In the description of the video, it was informed that the video was captured by RJ Navneet at Bengali Square Indore.
Reporting the details of this flying drone-strapped Hanuman idol, the ‘Times of India’ published an article in September 2016. According to the article, in May 2015, a Mumbai-based marketing company, as part of the promotion for their TV mythological show, ‘Sankatmochan Mahabali Hanuman’, hovered the drone-strapped 3D idols of Lord Hanuman over nine cities, including Bhopal, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Allahabad, Nagpur, Varanasi, Indore, Pune and Jaipur. The pictures shared in the articles are similar to the Hanuman photo shared in the post.
To sum it up, an old photo of a flying drone-strapped Hanuman idol was shared as a picture of real Hanuman caught flying in the sky.