Homeless Family Cooking Food Near Statue of Unity, Picture: Fact Check

Story:

See the sad picture of Homeless Family Cooking Food Near Statue of Unity in Gujarat.
The woman and her two children are cooking and eating food on the street!

Other Versions

Street children cooking and eating food near the Statue of Unity in Gujarat.

Fact Check:

A picture message in heavy circulation on social media sites purports to show a Homeless Family Cooking Food Near Statue of Unity in Gujarat. A woman and two children cooking and eating food on the street are visible just beside the world famous statue. Despite the claims, the picture seeming to show a homeless family cooking food near Statue of Unity is not real.

Image of Statue of Unity, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — Statue of Unity, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

About the Statue of Unity

The ‘Statue of Unity’ of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is the World’s Tallest Statue with a height of 182 metres (597 ft), spread over 20,000 square meters. It stands huge on a river island facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the river Narmada in Kevadiya colony of Gujarat, India. Vallabhbhai Patel was the first Deputy Prime Minister of India and an Independence activist along with Mahatma Gandhi during the non-violent movement. He played major leadership role in uniting the 562 princely states of India to form the single large Union of India without any violence. All these achievements earned him the name ‘Iron Man of India’.

Indian PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the Statue of Unity on 31st of October 2018 on Patel’s 143rd birth anniversary. The Statue of Unity is also an international attraction having elevators inside it to take tourists with tickets up to the observation deck at the heart of the statue.

Homeless Family Cooking Food Near Statue of Unity?

The picture message in question is circulating widely on social media and in some political circles as ‘the sad reality of India’. It is in fact doing rounds since few days before the statue was unveiled.

Some political figures and others criticized the project saying it is nothing but wastage of more than 2000 crores. Allegedly, there were also issues around the land acquisition from tribal population for the construction. Nonetheless, the picture in itself is not real. We found the image of the homeless people published in Reuters website in.reuters.com back in February 2010, long before the Statue of Unity was built.

Image of Homeless children eating food on a footpath of Ahmedabad — Homeless children eating food on a footpath of Ahmedabad

As a matter of fact, Journalist Amit Dave took the original image (without the Statue of Unity) back in February 2010. It only shows homeless children eating food on a footpath of Ahmedabad. Someone took a picture of the Statue of Unity, superimposed the homeless people cleverly and created the photoshopped image. The fabricated story of homeless family cooking food near Statue of Unity was then attached to the digitally-manipulated image.