Old video of flyover collapse shared in false posts about 'Delhi accident'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on February 24, 2023 at 09:55
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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"Arvind Kejriwal's big gift to the people of Delhi after winning the MCD election, there is no count of the death of many people and the injured due to the collapse of the under-construction metro pillar in Najafgarh."
"Who is responsible for this corrupt system? Will the government take any action against the careless officers?" reads the Hindi-language caption of a post shared on Twitter on February 20, 2023.
The video has been viewed more than 1000 times.
Arvind Kejriwal is the chief minister of Delhi and chief of the Aam Aadmi Party, which recently won the Municipal Corporation Delhi (MCD) election, ending 15 years of Bharatiya Janata Party control over the civic body.
The 59-second video appears to show several vehicles trapped under what looks like the debris of a collapsed structure.
The same video was shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here, here and on Twitter here.
However, the claim is false; the video shows an incident from 2018 when an under-construction bridge collapsed in Varanasi, a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, according to the video released at the time of that incident.
AFP was unable to find any official reports about a bridge collapse in the Najafgarh area of Delhi in 2023.
Flyover collapse in Varanasi
A keyword search on Google found similar footage published in a report by the Indian English-language news outlet Times of India on May 15, 2018.
The report's headline reads: "At least 19 killed as under-construction flyover collapses in Varanasi".
According to the report, a beam placed on a 40-foot pillar of an under-construction flyover near the Cantonment railway station of Varanasi suddenly fell, hitting vehicles parked under the bridge.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) in 2023 and the video published by the Times of India (right) in 2018:
The flyover collapse was reported by other Indian media outlets here, here and here.
According to Indian local media reports, the government suspended the chief project manager H. Tiwari, project manager K.R. Sudan and an assistant engineer for the incident in Varanasi.
The flyover can be seen on Google Street View here.
Below is the screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Google earth view of the flyover (right):
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