A video (here, here, and here) of a woman crying and stating that someone stole a necklace from her is doing the rounds on social media. Users are sharing this video with a caption that says that she lost a necklace worth 1.5 lakh rupees in the ongoing 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela. We verify this claim through this article.
Claim: A necklace of the woman seen in this video was stolen in the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025.
Fact: This incident did not happen during the ongoing Maha Kumbh Mela. The video belongs to an older incident that happened in Uttar Pradesh’s Hardoi on 14 December 2024. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search using a few keyframes from the viral video. This search led us to a month-old news report published by Dainik Bhaskar, describing this as a robbery incident in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh.
As per this report, a woman named Lakshmi Shrivastav lost her golden necklace during a Chief Minister’s mass marriage ceremony. An additional search on this incident led us to news reports (here, here, and here) from December 2024. As per these reports (here and here), this ceremony took place on 14 December 2024.
The Kotwali city police registered a case to investigate the robbery. However, Lakshmi Shrivastav later found that she left the necklace at her home and told the police that she had not lost it in the ceremony (here and here).
On 15 December 2024, Hardoi police tweeted about this on ‘X.’ In the same tweet, we can see Lakshmi explaining the whole incident and how, after going back home after the event, she found it lying in her house. This makes it clear that the video predates the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025.
To sum up, this video of a woman allegedly crying over a lost necklace is unrelated to Maha Kumbh Mela 2025.
