Several gruesome photos of badly charred animals are doing the round on social media claiming that they are from Karnataka's Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Chamarajanagar district where a major fire has engulfed the forest. (here)
BOOM also contacted Ambadi Madhav, director of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve.
"The images that are circulating on WhatsApp claiming that animals died in fire at Bandipur tiger reserve are not animals of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve," Madhav told BOOM.
"No animals died in this The incident happened on Friday night and it came to control on Saturday morning. Sensing there was a fire and the animals move to a different location."
Madhav was referring to the below images which have gone viral on WhatsApp.
WARNING: The below images are distressing in nature.
A Facebook page named 'ReachedMyStations.com' has posted the old images of the burnt animals with the text below.
"Bandipur forest #bandipur #karnataka fire has killed wild animals, destroyed forest over 950 acres. No funds can be raised for those innocent animals. No prayers, no candles will bring back those creatures. They have the right to live in their own land.
Share the post & Bring awareness among people"
Click here to view the post, and here for the archive.
The images were also shared on Twitter.
BOOM did a reverse image search of the photos being circulated and found them to be unrelated to the Bandipur fire.
The image of a rabbit suffering from burns was found to be from Malibu, California captured by Chris Rusanowsky (here) in a forest fire that occurred in November 2018.
The second photo of a dead endangered Bornean orangutan is from Indonesia caused due to illegal fire.
"Three endangered Bornean orangutans were killed in the blaze, including a mother and her two babies, which is believed to have been started to illegally clear farmland," according to this piece by UK tabloid Metro, dated March 3, 2016.
While we could not ascertain where the photo of a charred Pampus deer is from it was posted in October 2017 in connection with a fire at Brazil's National Park Chapada Dos Veadeiro
Magda , a Brazilian politician had posted the photo on October 27, 2017, on her verified Facebook page.
The last photo of a flock of dead sheep that were burnt during a wildfire was taken on July 23, 2012 in Darnius near La Junquera (Girona), close to the Spanish-French border.
Below is a screenshot from stock images site Getty.