On December 13, Kashi Vishwanath Dham was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi. He showered flower petals on sanitation workers at Kashi Vishwanath Temple as a gesture of gratitude for keeping the temple clean. While covering this event, News18 anchor …

This claim was repeated by union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar in Gujarat. “Taj Mahal workers’ hands were chopped off, and then there is PM Modi who showered flowers on the workers behind the development of the Kashi Vishwanath corridor t…

BJP leader Vinay Tendulkar made a similar claim on Twitter.

Alt News found that one of the oldest instances of this claim by a verified media account was by the UK-based Wired in 2010. Six years prior to this, UK’s leading news portal The Guardian also made the same claim.

The amplification of an urban myth The claim — Shah Jahan chopped the hands of those who built the Taj Mahal — is a well known urban myth. Alt News spoke with historian S Irfan Habib who said, “I can state that there is neither any evidence to back t…

That same year, Pakistan-based news outlet Dawn published an article about New York-based Rajiv Joseph’s play ‘Guards At The Taj’ which is based on the same myth. The article states, “The story about Shah Jehan ordering the amputation of 40,000 hands…