A video of an elephant throwing a person into the water has gone viral.  

Those sharing the video claim the incident happened in Tamil Nadu when the person, allegedly a policeman, stopped a ritual at a temple.

A social media user shared the video with a caption that reads, “The elephant chased away the policeman who tried to stop the puja. But it is the Dravidian party that exists today that must be chased away by the people in 2026. We must have the intelligence that the animal has; to save the nation, everyone must unite.” (Translated from Tamil)

SouthCheck found that the claim is false. The video is from an incident at the Kukke Subramaniam Temple in Karnataka. There is no mention of a puja being stopped by a policeman.

On a Google reverse image search, we found that the screenshot of the video was shared by a Kannada website, Vishwavani, on December 3.

According to the report, the incident happened at Kukke Subramanya Temple in Karnataka, located in Kadaba taluk of Dakshina Kannada district. The report stated that the temple elephant Yashaswi, who was playing in water with devotees during a festival, suddenly got agitated when a staff member tried to stop him from doing so. Yashaswi picked up the person with its trunk and threw him out of the pool. No one was injured.

We found that the video was also shared by the Instagram page of the same website on December 3. The caption suggests that the video is from Karnataka.

The video was also shared by another website, Dinamalar, on December 4.

According to the report, during the annual festival held at this temple, devotees play by pouring water on the temple elephant Yashaswini. It is customary for the elephant to enjoy this too. Thus, during a recent festival, devotees surrounded the elephant and splashed water on it with their hands. At that time, the elephant also danced happily. At this time, a temple servant who came in front of the elephant looked at the people there and gestured for them to move away. At this, the enraged elephant threw the person with its trunk. Many people who saw this were shocked. They tried to move back from where they were standing. But the elephant returned to its calm state and started playing with the devotees again.

We found that the incident was also reported by Daily Pulse.

Hence, we can ascertain that the claim is false.