True Indology has deactivated his account recently. We can't confirm the reason but through India Speaks on Reddit he wrote "I will not delete my account, I will deactivate it. Some political folks are after me, I will handle everything legally." Another Reddit thread shows that he received a legal notice from CPIM for a one-year-old tweet in which he had criticized SFI, the student wing of CPI(M) for a nude painting of Goddess Saraswati.

In this post, we will do a fact of a fact checker Pratik Sinha and his organization AltNews. Last Year AltNews published a series of articles to show how True Indology picks random images from the internet and use it to suit his agenda. While some of the points they have mentioned is true to some extent but they have made some blunders in many cases which put their credibility on risk.

I decided to do a fact check of their claim after reading case 14 in which Alt News has accused True Indology of using a picture of Neolithic settlement in the BC era as ruins of temples destroyed by Tipu Sultan at Palakkad. Mr. Pratik gave the reference of an article by The Hindu in which the image was used. 

When I clicked on the link I found that the caption of the image on The Hindu clearly says "the ruins of an old temple at the Thenmala Valley heritage site at Kollengode in Palakkad district".

The title of the article says "Neolithic settlements in Gayathripuzha river valley" while in the caption of the image it is Thenmala Valley. When we searched for Gayathripuzha valley on Google we found another article by The Hindu titled "Prehistoric posthole sites unearthed in Palakkad".

It was then I decided to dig deeper into this and found that True Indology had already responded to the AltNews in which he has discussed this case in detail. It made my work easier.

Here is how True Indology has demolished the lies of Pratik Sinha and Alt News

We have already discussed how the source given by Pratik Sinha doesn't support his claim because the caption of the image says it is temple ruins. 

The term Neolithic Period or New Stone Age period refers to the last stage of the Stone Age - a term coined in the late 19th century CE by scholars which covers three different periods: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. The Neolithic period is significant for its megalithic architecture, the spread of agricultural practices, and the use of polished stone tools.

Neolithic man of Kerala lived in Dolmens and Ashmounds. They were hunter-gatherers. Their dress was scanty. Here are the excerpts from the research carried out on Neolithic people of Kerala by Archeologist and Anthropologist Shri M.A Krishna Iyer.

Did The Hindu post a misleading image?

The image used by The Hindu was a representational image which is a very common practice. The article was about posthole sites with pillared halls the image of which was shared in another article about it by The Hindu. See the image below.

Conclusion: The image shared by True Indology was indeed of the ruins of temple destruction which AltNews falsely claimed to be of Neolithic settlement in the BC era.

We didn't verify whether the temple was demolished by Tipu Sultan or not as this was not the context. But temple destruction by Tipu Sultan in Kerala is well documented.

I am quite surprised that even after proven wrong AltNews has not updated their article or issued any apology to True Indology which puts their credibility as a fact-checking website on risk.

This is not the first time though. Earlier they had misquoted BJP's tweet and silently update the article without offering any acknowledgement or apology when we pointed it out to them through email.

Note: Many cases have been discussed by Alt News and many of them were rebutted by True Indology. After going through the details of this case, we have decided to do a fact check of all the claims made by AltNews which we will publish in near future.