Debunked cases — India
Debunked cases — India. 3 places in the catalogue, each with coordinates, the story behind it and a danger level from white to black.
The Hindu Milk Miracle
On the morning of 21 September 1995 word went round Delhi that statues of Ganesha were drinking milk from a spoon. By midday milk was being offered to images all over India, and then in temples in Britain, Canada and Nepal; Delhi sold out of milk and the traffic stopped. That same day India's Ministry of Science and Technology sent a team to the temples, which showed that the milk leaves the spoon through surface tension and the capillary action of porous stone and marble, and then runs down the statue in a thin film. When food colouring was added to the milk the trace became visible over the whole figure. By the evening of the next day the phenomenon had stopped of itself.
The Bleeding Cross of Vile Parle
In March 2012 water began dripping from the feet of a crucifix outside the church of Our Lady of Velankanni in the Mumbai district of Vile Parle; thousands came, collecting the water in bottles and drinking it. The rationalist Sanal Edamaruku arrived with a television crew, followed the damp patch on the wall behind the cross and found a blocked washbasin drain in the room behind it: the water was rising by capillary action through porous concrete and coming out through the figure's foot. He demonstrated it live on air. The Catholic archdiocese of Mumbai filed a complaint against him for outraging religious feelings, and Edamaruku, facing arrest without bail, left for Finland.
Sathya Sai Baba and the Gold Chain
Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi took sacred ash, rings and chains out of the air in front of millions of followers, among them Indian ministers and judges. In 1992 the state broadcaster Doordarshan filmed a ceremony with several cameras, and one angle shows an assistant passing him a gold chain from below, out of the base of the stand, a second before it materialised in his palm. The tape went round the country. The physicist H. Narasimhaiah, vice-chancellor of Bangalore University, had offered as early as 1976 to test the phenomena under controlled conditions and was refused; he wound up his committee saying there was nothing left to test.