Images of Pakistani citizen wearing gold jewellery falsely shared as Tirupati Balaji priest

Photographs of a man covered with gold chains and jewellery are circulating on social media. It is being claimed that the man is a priest at Tirupati Balaji. According to the claim, he has given 125 kg of gold to his three daughters. The set of photographs also includes an image of three women dressed in bridal wear and adorning heavy gold jewellery. “तिरुपति बालाजी मंदिर के पंडित की तीन बेटियों की शादी का फोटो. तीनों के सोने के गहनों का बजन 125Kg है।”, reads the text blurb placed above a collage of photos in the graphic.

Images of this man are circulating on Twitter and Facebook with an identical claim.

A 2018 Facebook post by one Meena Kumari has been shared more than 67,000 times so far.

 Fact-check

With the help of a reverse image search on Yandex, Alt News found the Facebook page of a Pakistani resident named Amjad Saeed who according to his Facebook bio hails from Rawalpindi and claims to be CEO at Jewellery Mehal. We found multiple images of Amjad Saeed where he is seeing flaunting his jewellery.

The image posted below was uploaded on his Twitter account on September 23, 2018.

Gold Man / KaKa 222 +923032120222#GoldManKaka222 #GoldMan #GoldManPakistan #KaKa222 #AmjadSaeed #JewelleryMehal pic.twitter.com/omsknye9kO

— GoldMan Kaka 222 (@GoldmanKaka) September 23, 2018

He also runs a Facebook page with 28,000 followers named Gold Man  / Kaka 222.

Amjad Saeed got featured in a video report by Pakistani news channel Samaa TV.

Moreover, the image of three brides wearing heavy ornaments is circulating on the internet for more than three years now. We found the same photo published by BuzzFeed in an article in  April 2016 with a different context. However, we were unable to independently verify the origins of this image.

In conclusion, photographs of a Pakistani man wearing gold jewellery has been shared as that of a priest from Tirupati Balaji who gave his daughters 125 Kg gold.