An image supposedly showing Lord Ram’s image being projected onto the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has gone viral with the claim that it was being done on the occasion of the inauguration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
“Burj Khalifa displayed the idol of Lord Rama on the occasion of #RamMandirPranPrathistha. Jai Shree Ram. No sanathan will pass without liking this, (sic)” wrote an X user who shared the image.
On January 22, 2024, the ‘pran pratishtha’ (consecration ceremony) of Ram Lalla was held in the presence of prime minister Narendra Modi and many distinguished guests, including prominent politicians, sportspersons, film stars, and industrialists who were invited to the ceremony.
At the time of writing this article, the image has been retweeted more than 850 times and liked more than 6,000 times.
SouthCheck found that the viral image was edited.
We started with checking the official socials of Burj Khalifa. We checked Burj Khalifa’s Facebook and Instagram accounts where visuals related to illumination done on the side of the building are posted.
The latest post on the official Instagram page of Burj Khalifa was on January 2, 2024, which was about a laser and light show that will be happening at Burj Khalifa every night till January 31.
To find out the original image, we did a Google Reverse Image Search that led us to an image similar to the viral image, published on Pinterest, except that the image of Lord Ram was not there on the Burj Khalifa.
A website with a listicle on travel destinations in Dubai also published a similar image of Burj Khalifa on October 22, 2019. We further looked at the similarities between the two images and found them to be an exact match except that Lord Ram was not on the original image.
An Error Level Analysis (ELA) of the image shows the image of Lord Ram in a much brighter pixel, suggesting that the image is edited. Moreover, no media organisation has reported about Burj Khalifa being illuminated with the image of Lord Ram.
Hence, we can ascertain that the viral image was edited and that Lord Ram’s image was not projected on Burj Khalifa.
