To take the sacred dip at the Maha Kumbh in Prayagraj, picture yourself as a woman who has walked for kilometers on end, ridden buses and trains that are overflowing, and navigated seas of people. Imagine that someone surreptitiously captured this deeply spiritual (and vulnerable) moment from multiple perspectives, then posted it on social media as a lure for graphic material. Unfortunately, this is not a speculative situation.
On social media and Telegram, the news agency discovered images and videos purportedly of women taking a shower and changing their attire at the Maha Kumbh. Additionally, some of these are being distributed as teasers to promote additional pictures and videos of this kind.
Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are flooded with videos of women taking showers and changing clothes along riverbanks. Many of these films direct viewers to Telegram, where they purport to find full recordings of women taking baths.
Videos of women being bathed are frequently posted on Facebook by accounts that promote pornography, with descriptions such as “Maha Kumbh Ganga Snan Prayagraj.” In these posts, some people also include hashtags like #prayagrajkumbh, #gangasnan, and #mahakumbh2025. One such video shows a woman taking a bath in a river while exposing her buttocks and lower back. As the person filming her purposefully zooms in on her body, she keeps taking a bath without realizing she is being filmed. This is but one illustration of the pornographic images that are shared on these accounts.
Interestingly, a few of the Maha Kumbh-related videos and pictures that we looked at and shared with popular keywords are actually older and not from Prayagraj. Nonetheless, they are being circulated as images of the massive celebration. Some have even compiled a database of such offensive recordings of women getting dressed and taking baths on the banks of rivers.
Two Telegram channels that provide access to private groups with covertly recorded footage of women taking showers and changing into new clothes were discovered by the news agency. These videos are being shared in groups called “Open Bath Videos Group,” “Hidden Bath Videos Group,” and “Ganga River Open Bathing Group.” The Telegram search engine and analytics platform Telemetrio reports that between February 12 and February 18, the keyword “open bathing” saw a notable increase in searches in India.
Women are frequently seen changing into new clothes or wrapping themselves in towels in these images and videos. Access to these channels costs between Rs 1,999 and Rs 3,000. Some of those Telegram channels were taken down while the news organization was looking into this story. In addition to videos and pictures of women taking baths, these Telegram channels also include CCTV footage of women being inspected by medical professionals; many of these videos show the women’s intimate areas being examined or treated.
