Puri: In a firm move to protect religious sentiments, Puri police have removed 97 AI-generated distorted images and visuals from social media platforms that falsely portrayed the sacred deities of the Jagannath Temple — Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra, and Devi Subhadra — as sick or unwell.
The images, which depicted the deities with thermometers in their mouths and wet cloths on their foreheads, triggered widespread outrage among devotees just days before the grand Rath Yatra festival.
Puri SP Prateek Singh issued a strong warning, stating, “Such distortion of the deities will not be tolerated. We have facilitated the withdrawal of a large number of disrespectful photos and videos of the sibling deities from social media platforms. If this practice continues, we will initiate legal action.”
The controversy erupted following the Debasnana Purnima on June 29 when the deities underwent their traditional ceremonial bath with 108 pots of holy water on the Snana Mandap. As per longstanding temple customs, the idols are then kept in the ‘Anasara Ghara’ — a symbolic sick room within the shrine — for about a fortnight. Devotees believe the deities are recuperating from the bath before re-emerging in their renewed forms ahead of Rath Yatra.
Temple officials and servitors emphasized that the Anasara period is a revered symbolic ritual representing renewal, not literal illness. “Digitally created visuals showing the deities as ill have flooded social media. Such distortions trivialise sacred tradition and have deeply hurt devotees’ sentiments,” servitor Shayma Mohapatra told TOI.
An official from the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) appealed to devotees: “We appeal to devotees not to indulge in or circulate misleading content. The rituals are symbolic and revered. Any attempt to misrepresent them would wound religious sentiment.”
This incident comes amid broader concerns over the misuse of AI to create fabricated content related to the Jagannath tradition. Earlier this year, the SJTA had filed police complaints against specific social media accounts for circulating objectionable AI-generated videos and images of the deity.
Authorities have urged social media users to exercise caution and respect the sanctity of the rituals associated with one of India’s most significant Hindu festivals. Every year, millions of devotees gather in the pilgrim town to pull three massive, elaborately decorated wooden chariots down the Grand Road to the Gundicha Temple as the deities of Shree Jagannath Temple embark on their annual sojourn.
