A statue of Jesus Christ in Mumbai, India, started dripping “holy water” that believers collected and drank however was later confirmed to be leakage from a clogged rest room.
Famed superstition debunker Sanal Edamaruku investigated and located the water dripping from the statue was leakage from a close-by sewage pipe. This, in flip, led to his exile to Europe after Catholic teams introduced costs in opposition to him for allegedly violating India’s “Blasphemy Legal guidelines.”
The declare particularly ascribes the leaking water to a “clogged rest room,” a element that would not but be verified with a main supply. Snopes has reached out to Edamaruku to study extra.
A declare {that a} statue of Jesus Christ in Mumbai, India, mysteriously started dripping holy water from its toes, inflicting some to imagine it was a divine miracle, circulated on-line in November 2024.
In accordance with a Reddit submit, believers started to gather and even ingest the water, just for it to later be proven to be the results of a clogged rest room.
One consumer commenting on the Reddit thread said, “To be truthful, that water was nearly certainly imbued with the miracle of life. Microbial life, sure, however it was imbued.”
This declare has circulated beforehand, together with in a post on X in April 2024 and a number of Reddit threads from 2019, prompting a consumer to comment, “Stuffed with nutritional vitamins B and M.”
(Sad_Stay_5471 on Reddit)
Whereas the declare that the incidence was a miracle was debunked when the water was confirmed to be leaking sewage water is true, we have rated this as a combination of true and undetermined as a result of the leak was allegedly the results of a clogged rest room, however we now have not but been capable of independently confirm this particular element with a main supply.
Nevertheless, the occasions surrounding the Jesus statue in Mumbai have been broadly coated by the media again in 2012, primarily as a result of controversial aftermath of the debunking.
When the statue outdoors the Church of Our Girl of Velankanni in Mumbai started drawing the eye of Catholics as a possible miracle website, Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku was requested to analyze for a phase on India’s TV9.
In a 2012 interview with New Scientist, a weekly science and expertise publication, Edamaruku defined his findings.
I had an in depth have a look at a close-by washroom and the linked drainage system that handed beneath the concrete base of the cross. I eliminated some stones from the drain and located it was blocked. I touched the partitions, the bottom and the cross and took some pictures for documentation. It was quite simple: water from the washroom, which had been blocked within the clogged drainage system, had been transmitted by way of capillary motion into the adjoining partitions and the bottom of the cross in addition to into the picket cross itself. The water got here out via a nail gap and ran down over the statue’s toes.
Edamaruku was a recognized debunker on the time, having beforehand made headlines for difficult a Hindu fakir who claimed he might “kill anyone with tantric chanting” to take action on dwell tv.
In accordance with the BBC:
As each have been friends within the studio, the fakir was put to the check instantly.
The channel cancelled all subsequent programming and he started chanting on the spot. However because the hours handed a word of desperation crept into his raspy mantras. For his half, Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Affiliation, confirmed no signal of discomfort, not to mention demise. He merely chortled his means via this unconventional (and unsuccessful) try on his life.
The identical BBC report additionally talked about Edamaruku’s actions within the Nineteen Nineties when “Edamaruku visited tons of of villages replicating the apparently fabulous feats some self-proclaimed holy males grew to become famend for — the materialisations of watches or ‘holy’ ash — exposing them as mere sleight of hand.”
Regardless of his previous expertise in debunking spiritual miracles, his look on TV9 sparked outrage from Catholic organizations in India, they usually filed costs in opposition to him, citing Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which outlines a punishment of “imprisonment… for a time period which can lengthen to a few years, or with tremendous, or with each” for “Deliberate and malicious acts, meant to outrage spiritual emotions of any class by insulting its faith or spiritual beliefs.”
Fearing prosecution, Edamaruku fled to Europe in 2012 and has lived there ever since. He instructed The Guardian on the time, “The Catholic archbishop of Bombay, Oswald, Cardinal Gracias, has mentioned that if I apologise for the ‘offence’ I’ve induced he’ll see to it that the costs are dropped. This exhibits that he has affect within the scenario however he won’t use it except I apologise, which I can’t do as I’ve completed nothing flawed.”
In 2013, he instructed the general public radio program “The World,” “I by no means ever believed that such a factor would occur in India. I by no means, ever thought that doing one thing to advertise scientific mood and educate folks in opposition to superstition could be taken as a criminal offense in India.”
Snopes reached out to Edamaruku to confirm the specifics of the story, together with the declare that the leak was attributable to a clogged rest room, and can replace this text and its score if and after we study extra.
Snopes has fact-checked many reviews of so-called miracles, together with a Jesus statue allegedly opening its eyes, a church being physically moved by the hand of God and spilled salt forming an image of Jesus.
