Woman Walking in Shallow Waters of Narmada River Mistaken for Goddess - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 11, 2023
A video circulating on social media features an elderly woman walking on a river, with an accompanying claim suggesting she is the Goddess Narmada Mata. It asserts that she is walking on the Narmada River without drowning or her clothes getting wet. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Goddess Narmada walking on river without getting drowned.
Fact: The elderly woman seen in the video is identified as Jyoti Raghuvanshi. She is a resident of Narmadapuram, MP. During her pilgrimage, she walked through the shallow waters of the Narmada River in Jabalpur and was mistakenly believed to be a goddess. She left home 10 months ago. The police contacted her family to reunite them. Therefore, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We conducted an internet search using relevant keywords and found ground reports by the Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar. The incident occurred in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, on 8 April 2023, when a viral video of a woman walking on water attracted a crowd. People gathered to seek blessings, believing her to be ‘Goddess Narmada.’ The police had to intervene to control the crowd. In an interview, when asked about walking on water, she explained that she walks through the river where the water is shallow, below knee level, and her clothes dry as she comes out of the water to pray. She emphasized that there is no miracle involved.
The woman in the viral video, identified as Jyoti Raghuvanshi, informed the police that she was a resident of Narmada Puram, MP, and had left home 10 months ago without telling anyone to perform a parikrama of the Narmada River. The police contacted her family to reunite them. The family had filed a missing report when she left home and stated that she was mentally unwell.
To sum it up, the video depicts a woman walking through the shallow waters of the Narmada River as part of a pilgrimage in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, who was mistakenly believed to be a goddess.