Claim: Mari Matta Mandir in Soldier Bazaar was not demolished; instead, a woman’s private property adjacent to the temple was destroyed with her consent.
Fact: The structure that was demolished was not the woman’s house but the main area of the temple that had been encroached over the past few years. The majority (280 sq yards) of the temple’s original structure has been recently demolished, leaving only a tiny part where the deities were moved some years ago.
On 16 July 2023, after reports that a temple was destroyed, Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab posted a Tweet with an image of a small worship area and claimed that the temple was “still intact” and “no such demolition of the Mandir has taken place.”
On 17 July 2023, the Youtube channel Chaltay Phirtay posted a video, which was reposted to Twitter and Facebook, claiming that Mari Matta Mandir in Soldier Bazaar was not demolished and that a woman’s private property adjacent to the temple was destroyed with her consent. The video features an interview with the woman, Rekha Bai, who says that she is renovating her property which stood on the demolished plot in question. The video also shows the same small worship area where some idols are placed and claims that this is the actual temple and that it is intact.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check found that the video is false and misleading. By searching the words “Mari Mata” “Soldier Bazaar” with “Mandir” and “temple” on Google image search, we found pictures of the temple before and after the demolition, which revealed the video by Chaltay Phirtay and the picture in Mayor Murtaza Wahab’s Tweet only showed a small section of the temple where some idols were placed, and not the main area of worship.
According to a report by Dawn.com, the majority (280 sq yards) of the temple’s original structure has been recently demolished, leaving only a tiny part where the deities were moved some years ago.
On 19 July 2023, Dawn.com reported that the Sindh government had announced that it would reconstruct the 150-year-old Marie Mata Temple on its original site and take action against those responsible for the demolition. The report quotes Sindh Minister for Minorities Affairs Hari Ram Kishori Lal, who told the provincial assembly that the temple was a heritage site and that the government would not allow anyone to encroach upon it. He said that the government would also provide compensation to Rekha Bai, who had been living in a portion of the temple as a tenant.
This report and the discussion of the issue in parliament cited in it confirm the temple was indeed demolished and clarified Rekha Bai was a tenant of one of the encroached and rented out portions of the temple’s structure.
Virality
The video by Chaltay Phirtay has been viewed over 50,000 times and has received over 200 comments, mostly praising the channel for exposing the “propaganda” against the temple demolition.
Wahab’s tweet was one of the most viral posts related to the temple demolition on Twitter. It received 53,000 views, 189 retweets, 52 quote tweets, 471 likes, and 5 bookmarks as of 30 July 2023.
Conclusion: The video by Chaltay Phirtay claiming that Mari Matta Mandir in Soldier Bazaar was not demolished and that another woman’s private property adjacent to the temple was destroyed with her consent is false and misleading. The structure that was demolished was the main area of the temple that had been encroached over the past few years. The majority (280 sq yards) of the temple’s original structure has been recently demolished, leaving only a tiny part where the deities were moved some years ago.
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