Photo of Indian aerospace engineer shared as 'astrologer' predicting next Sri Lankan president
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 20, 2023 at 10:48
- 3 min read
- By AFP Sri Lanka
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"A short man with a mark on his face will be the ruler of Sri Lanka in the near future and elevate the country to among the best nations in Asia -- Nambi Narayana, senior Indian astrologer," reads Sinhala-language text on an image shared on Facebook here on September 4, 2023.
The description appears to be referring to Anura Kumara Dissanayake, leader of Sri Lanka's opposition National People's Power (NPP) party (archived link).
He is considered a likely candidate in the country's next presidential elections, expected before the end of current President Ranil Wickremesinghe's term at the end of 2024 (archived links here and here).
Alluding to another purported prediction that occurred prior to the 2019 presidential election, the image's caption reads: "Great, all that is missing now is cobra king from Kelaniya to confirm this."
Local media reported that a "cobra god" was said to have appeared in a historic temple predicting prosperity for Sri Lanka following the 2019 poll of a new leader who -- at the time -- was expected to be Gotabaya Rajapaksa (archived link).
Rajapaksa did win the election, but resigned from the post following weeks of public unrest in 2022 (archived link).
The same image was also shared elsewhere on Facebook here and here.
Comments on the posts suggest some users believed this was a genuine prophecy about Dissanayake winning the upcoming election.
"Anura will win in 2024, we don't need Indian soothsayers to tell us the obvious," read one comment.
Another said: "Astrologers trying to benefit from claiming the obvious. Of course he will win, we will make sure it happens."
The person in the image, however, is not an astrologer and did not make an election prediction.
Aerospace engineer
A reverse image search on Google led to a similar photo in a report by Indian news website Rediff captioned "Nambi Narayanan" (archived link).
Narayanan is an aerospace engineer who previously worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation (archived links here and here).
He was accused of spying and selling rocket technology to Pakistan in 1994, but was exonerated by India's federal investigation bureau and the case against him was dismissed by the country's Supreme Court (archived link).
A film based on his experiences won Best Feature Film at the National Film Awards in 2023 (archived link).
The same photo is available on Wikipedia here, where it was uploaded on November 5, 2017 by a user called "Vicharam" (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of Narayanan as pictured in the falsely shared post (left) and the image used in the Rediff article (right):
Narayanan also told AFP that he had not made a claim about the Sri Lankan election.
"I don’t even know who Anura [Dissanayake] is," he said over the phone on September 12, 2023.
" I have no idea why people are associating any such claims with me, this is sad and funny at the same time."
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