Photo from Prayagraj falsely viral as mosque on Old Delhi railway junction

An image of what appears to be a mosque on a railway platform has been widely circulating online. Several people have claimed that a mosque stands on the platform of the Old Delhi railway station. According to the claim, the mosque hasn’t been removed even as the Hanuman temple that stood on the road at Chandni Chowk was torn down last week as part of the area’s redevelopment project. The Hanuman temple, declared an encroachment, was demolished under the Delhi High Court’s orders.

Twitter user Manvi Tripathi shared this image with a similar claim. It had received more than 4,100 retweets at the time of writing. (Archive link)

ये मस्जिद पुरानी दिल्ली रेलवे स्टेशन के प्लेटफॉर्म पर है, किसी मे हिम्मत है इसको कब तुड़वा रहे हो या सिर्फ हनुमान मंदिर ही रास्ते का रोड़ा था तुम्हारे 😠

आवाज उठाओ साथियों रीट्वीट करो pic.twitter.com/64NsbFg7U2

— Manvi Tripathi (@ManviTripathi5) January 6, 2021

Another user named Pinky Singh also tweeted the photo and accompanying claim.

The photo has gone viral on Twitter and Facebook.

Fact-check

Alt News performed a keyword search which led us to a Facebook post from June 4, 2016. According to this post, the mosque is actually located at the Allahabad Junction, which has been now named renamed to Prayagraj. The post shares a few photos of the structure. A 2013 blog post also featured the viral picture, stating that it had been taken at the Prayagraj Junction.

Upon further research, we found a photo of the Allahabad Junction in a Business Standard story dated January 2, 2019. It states that the Center had given the green signal to change the name of the city of Allahabad to Prayagraj. The tomb can be seen in the photo included here, albeit from a different angle. When we compare this and the viral image, it becomes clear that this tomb is at the Prayagraj Junction and not at the Old Delhi railway station.

The structure is called the Line Shah Baba tomb. A few photos of the tomb have also been shared on Google Maps. Apart from these, a user on Google Maps shared a 360-degree image of Prayagraj Junction in November 2020. The tomb can also be seen here. A Prayagraj Junction sign is visible in the front of the tomb while a foot over bridge appears in the background.

Alt News reached out to the Prayagraj Junction Superintendent of Police, Manoj Kumar Jha. “We have not received any complaints about this tomb yet. It was actually here before the railway station was constructed. People of all religions come here to offer their prayers. We have not received any complaints regarding this tomb to my knowledge”, he said.

Therefore, a picture of the Line Shah Baba tomb at the Prayagraj Junction was falsely shared as a mosque built at the Old Delhi railway station. Netizens began circulating the image accusing the Delhi government of double standards. They targeted them for the recent demolition of a Hanuman temple in Chandni Chowk which was carried out after a court order.