Not ISKCON temple, rescue scene from Indian bar
A video circulating on Facebook claims that police rescued hundreds of women from a brothel located beneath an ISKCON temple. However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that this is footage of women being rescued from the basement of a bar in Mumbai, India.
On September 2, a video was posted from a Facebook profile with the caption, “Hundreds of girls have been rescued from the basement of an ISKCON temple. This is a video of police rescuing them from a temple. You can share the video with our ‘Abal’ brothers.” The 2-minute-and-21-second video shows several women emerging from inside a basement with their faces covered. In the background, the sound of people talking and laughing can be heard.
As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 263,000 times and shared more than 6,300 times. There were approximately 1,000 reactions to the post.
The video was seen posted with the same claim from multiple Facebook profiles and pages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Many of the videos in circulation do not mention the location of the incident, but some posts claim that the incident took place at an ISKCON temple in India.
The same video was posted from another Facebook profile on September 3. Text embedded within the video reads “Hundreds of girls detained by local residents after emerging from a tunnel inside a shrine.” In the post, the same user wrote, “Hundreds of girls wearing fairy dresses came out of the tunnel inside the mazar.”
To verify its authenticity, a reverse image search was conducted using keyframes from the video. This led Dismislab to a video posted on the Facebook page of “Nation Today,” which identifies itself as a news outlet. The scenes in this video were found to match the scenes in the circulating video. The post’s description read, “Raid at Mumbai’s Deepa Dance Bar of Andheri West. 22 staff members including 17 bar dancer arrested …”
Dismislab also found the video in a report published on a Marathi YouTube channel. The translated headline reads, “Raid conducted at Deepa Dance Bar, 17 bar dancers rescued from a secret underground room.”
For further verification, using relevant keywords, reports on this incident published by multiple Indian news outlets were found (1, 2, 3). According to a report by the news outlet NDTV, a raid was conducted at the Deepa Dance Bar in Andheri on December 11, 2021, based on a confidential tip. Seventeen dancers were found inside a secret basement. A case was filed against staff, including the bar manager and cashier, in connection with the incident.
In other words, the claim that women were rescued from an ISKCON temple or a shrine is not correct. The video shows the rescue of women from a dance bar in Mumbai approximately five years ago.
