False: PM Narendra Modi visited Bageshwar Dham to meet self-styled godman Dhirendra Shastri.

Context

Self-styled godman Dhirendra Shastri, who his followers call Bageshwar Baba or Bageshwar Dham Sarkar, has been making news in India over the past months for his controversial statements and claims. Several leading politicians, including union minister Nitin Gadkari, have met the godman based in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Claims about the 26-year-old TV and social media sensation meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi are now gaining much traction on social media. Several videos, which combine clips of Modi paying his respects at a temple and Shastri addressing crowds, are being shared with the claim that the PM visited the godman in Madhya Pradesh. The voiceovers in some of these videos claim that Modi has joined a league of Shastri's followers, which also features Bollywood actors. Similar videos have also been uploaded on many YouTube channels. An image of Modi bowing to Shastri was also shared by several users with the same claim. 

In Fact

We found that all the videos claiming to show Modi meeting Shastri include fragments of an old video of the prime minister's visit to a temple in Gujarat, while the photo of Modi purportedly bowing to the godman has been digitally altered.

After running a reverse image search on the photo of Modi seemingly bowing to Shastri, we found a video on Modi's official YouTube account. This video showed Modi visiting spiritual leader and seer Shivakumar Swami at the Siddaganga Math in Karnataka on September 24, 2014. The outfit Modi wore in this eight-year-old video—a white kurta with an orange jacket—was the same as in the viral picture. In this video, Modi greets Shivakumar Swami, bows to him with folded hands, honors him with a shawl, and is later seen seated with Shivakumar. We also found a similar image of PM Modi bowing to the seer on his official Twitter account, posted in a tweet on January 21, 2019, where the prime minister expressed his condolences over the death of the seer. This image of Modi bowing with folded hands in front of the seer has been digitally modified to show Modi greeting Shastri. 

Next, we found that the clips in the videos showing Modi entering a temple and bowing to a temple statue are from his visit in 2022 to the Modheshwari Mata temple in Gujarat. We located the original video that was live-streamed on October 9, 2022, on Modi's YouTube channel, where he was greeted with a red and orange shawl upon his arrival by Bhupendra Patel, the chief minister of Gujarat. In the video, Modi bowed with folded hands in front of a deity's statue in the temple's sanctuary. The footage of this event showed Modi in a kurta and blue jacket, coupled with the red and orange shawl, which matches the outfit seen on Modi in viral videos. Clearly, segments from this video have been repurposed in the Facebook posts with a chant in the background to claim that Modi had visited Dhirendra Shastri at Bageshwar Dham, where the latter is the head priest. Photos of his visit uploaded on Modi's Twitter handle also captured the same scenes.

Further, we found that Shastri uploaded a video on his YouTube channel, denouncing people falsely claiming that Modi visited the godman. In the video, Shastri said his team had learned that some manipulated photos were being circulated to claim that Modi had visited Shastri at Bageshwar Dham. Further, he asked people to delete the edited pictures and warned against spreading such false claims. There are also no credible news reports to support the claim that PM Modi visited Shastri at Bageshwar Dham. This was also clarified by the Twitter handle of PIB Fact Check, the fact-checking arm of the government-run Press Information Bureau, which categorically said that all videos showing PM’s visit to Bageshwar Dham to meet Shastri are fake. 

The Verdict

The claim that PM Narendra Modi visited Madhya Pradesh's Bageshwar Dham and met spiritual leadergodmanDhirendra Shastri is false. A doctored photo and old footage of PM Modi's visit to a Gujarat temple are being used to support the false claim.