A video and its screenshots (here, here and here) circulating on social media claim to show women being rescued from an underground area and that they were caught engaging in prostitution at a temple in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. Let’s find the truth behind this claim.
Claim: The viral video shows women being rescued from an underground area after being caught engaging in prostitution at a temple in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.
Fact: The video is from a police raid at Deepa Dance Bar in Andheri, Mumbai, in December 2021, where 17 women were rescued. There is no evidence of any such incident occurring at a temple in Gorakhpur. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To begin with, we conducted a keyword search to check whether any such incident had occurred at a temple in Gorakhpur. However, this search did not yield any credible news reports.
We then performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same visuals uploaded on multiple social media platforms in December 2021 (here, here, and here). These posts identified the visuals as being from a police raid at Deepa Dance Bar in Andheri West, Mumbai, and not from Gorakhpur.
Further research using relevant keywords led us to several media reports confirming the incident (here, here, here, and here). According to these reports, Mumbai Police rescued 17 women during a raid at Deepa Bar in Andheri on 13 December 2021. The women were found hidden in a secret room equipped with basic amenities. The raid followed a complaint by an NGO alleging violations of COVID-19 norms and that the bar was operating secretly through the night. An FIR was registered against the bar owners and others, and the premises were sealed.
To sum up, the video from a 2021 police raid at a Mumbai dance bar is falsely shared as an incident from a temple in Gorakhpur.
