Rumour

During the roadshow of Bharatiya Janata Party, President Amit Shah in the West Bengal, the idol of social activist Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was damaged. Meanwhile, on social media, it was claimed through some viral photographs that the CCTV footage has revealed that the statue of Vidyasagar has been broken by TMC people. some people in the pictures are seen breaking a White statue. A Facebook user Pintu Kumar posted a picture with the caption "It is clearly visible in the CCTV footage that TMC is destructing the statue of Vidyasagar. Dirty politics have been played by Mamata Banerjee."

The same set of pictures has been circulated by many other users on Facebook.

Our Investigation

After doing reverse research of the image we found a report from the media house CNN regarding these pictures. According to this report printed in 2015, some ISIS terrorists had hammered some ancient statues in northern Iraq with hammers. These incidents were also discussed quite well.

We found another report by The Guardian dated 27 February 2015 in which the same picture is used that has now gone viral.

 We also found a video report published by American news network CNN on March 5, 2015. 

Moreover, it was Vidyasagar's bust which was vandalised not a full statue. Here is a comparison of Vidyasagar's bust and the picture going viral.

Fact

The viral picture is from 2015, showing ISIS terrorists destroying artifacts in northern Iraq. A set of completely unrelated pictures is being shared to claim that the TMC workers vandalizing the statue of Vidyasagar in West Bengal.

It is not clear who broke the bust of Vidyasagar. While BJP president Amit Shah shared some pictures in a press conference to claim that TMC workers inside the campus might be involved in this since the gate was locked from outside, Alt news has shown some videos to claim that BJP workers may have been involved in this. But Alt news' assumption that people wearing saffron clothes are BJP workers may be wrong as there was a case in Jharkhand in which a Muslim man dressed in Bhagwa to do stone pelting.