Amidst the communal tensions in Ratlam, where four Muslims were arrested for throwing cow parts into a temple on 14 June 2024, a screenshot of a post with a priest carrying the head of a dead buffalo is being shared on social media (here, here, and here) claiming that “the chopped head of a cow was thrown by 2 Muslim guys in a temple, Pujari ji had to do this to maintain the sanctity of the temple and then see how this Islamist is making fun of it.” Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: The photo shows a Hindu priest carrying the severed head of a buffalo, which had been thrown by Muslims, to preserve the sanctity of the temple.
Fact: This image was captured on 29 September 2017 when a sacrificed buffalo head was carried by a man on his head at Billeshwar Dewalaya of goddess Durga on Navami Durga Puja Festival. This is not related to the Madhya Pradesh cow slaughter incident on 14 June 2024, where four Muslims were accused for throwing cow parts into a temple. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On performing a reverse image search of the viral image, we found the same image published by Getty Images in 2017 with the caption, “A buffalo sacrificed at Billeshwar Dewalaya Temple of Hindu goddess Durga on the occasion of Navami Durga Puja Festival.” The photo’s description further states that this image was captured on 29 September 2017 in Belsor, Assam. Sacrificed buffalo head was carried by a man on his head at Billeshwar Dewalaya of goddess Durga on Navami Durga Puja Festival.
Further, a relevant keyword search led us to a 2017 report by the Times of India, which stated that the 500-year-old Billeshwar Dewalaya where buffalo sacrifice is an age-old tradition, had experienced an increase in the number of people booking buffaloes for sacrifice, despite restrictions on animal slaughter. Another report by the Times of India, published in 2020, stated that the Billeshwar Dewalaya, which typically saw 50 sacrifices per year, would only experience one sacrifice amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. More images related to this event can be seen here and here.
Further research on cow slaughter led us to recent reports (here, here, and here) where the stringent National Security Act (NSA) was invoked on 14 June 2024 against four Muslims accused of throwing the severed head of a cow into a temple in Jaora in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam district. This incident is being attributed to the viral image and shared.
To sum up, the image of a priest carrying a severed buffalo head is from Navami Durga Puja in Assam in 2017.
