Photoshopped image shared as floating lanterns over Varanasi ghats

An image has been shared widely on Facebook with the claim that it represents the ghats of Varanasi.

The image above was posted on October 26 by a Facebook page, ‘Saffron Chariot’. It has been shared over 7600 times so far. As can be seen, floating lanterns dominate the skyline over what is purportedly the famous ghats of Varanasi. The image has also been shared on Twitter.

Assi Ghat #Varanasi wali #Diwali #HappyDiwali pic.twitter.com/6aOggqY8Zy

— Himanshu (@ImkHimansh) October 26, 2019

FACT CHECK: PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE

Alt News found that the image in question is photoshopped. We first reverse-searched the image on both Google and Yandex, but this yielded no result. Then, we cropped the portion of the image containing the floating lanterns and reverse-searched it on Yandex.

We found the identical image posted on Flickr, titled ‘Thailand Day 09, Yi Peng Khom Loi Festival 2013, Maejo University, Chiang Mai’.

The two images have been juxtaposed and placed below for comparison. Notice the similarities (marked in green and yellow).

A lantern-filled skyline was superimposed on a photograph of Varanasi ghats. We found a similar image of the ghats (same location) taken from a different angle.

It may thus be noted that the image shared on social media, claimed to be of the Varanasi ghats, is photoshopped.