Posts falsely link video of injured bird to Sarus crane saved by Indian farmer

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 12, 2023 at 05:08
3 min read
By Anuradha PRASAD, AFP India

A bird that would not leave the side of the Indian farmer who nursed it back to health remains in quarantine at a zoo, a spokesperson told AFP, contradicting Facebook and Twitter posts that claim the Sarus crane was found bleeding at a railway station. The posts share a video of a Sarus crane, but the clip in fact shows a different bird that died after being found injured on the platform.

The video of a bleeding Sarus crane, which was shared on Facebook on March 25, has been viewed more than 234,000 times.

Sarus cranes, the world's tallest flying bird, are found in the Indian subcontinent, southeast Asia and northern Australia.

The Hindi-language Facebook post says: "This country's weird laws will kill the Sarus. This is the Sarus that was living happily with Arif and look now."

The post appears to refer to a Sarus crane and Mohammad Arif, a farmer from the Amethi district of Uttar Pradesh in northern India.

The duo became local celebrities after videos of the crane flying alongside Arif as he rode his motorcycle went viral on social media.

Arif found the crane injured in a field and nursed it back to health, but once the bird had recovered, it never returned to the wild, the Indian Express newspaper reported.

Authorities found Arif had breached the Wildlife Protection Act and moved the bird from his house first to a sanctuary and then to Kanpur Zoo "after realising that the wild was no place for a creature now used to domestic comforts".

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on April 10, 2023

The video was also shared on Facebook here and here; and on Twitter here and here.

The clip, however, does not show the bird that authorities moved from Arif's house.

Jitendra Kumar, a spokesperson for Kanpur Zoo, said the crane was still at the zoo.

"The Sarus is with us under quarantine and doing fine," he told AFP on April 5.

Injured crane at Bareilly station

A keyword search on Google found corresponding footage in a report by Hindi-language news channel Aaj Tak on March 24.

According to the report, the crane was found injured at Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly railway station.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video used the false posts (left) and the corresponding footage in Aaj Tak's report (right):

Screenshot comparison of the video used the false posts (left) and the corresponding footage in Aaj Tak's report (right)

Local police posted about the bird on Twitter on March 23, saying: "Today, on March 23, 2023, the station in charge of GRP (Government Railway Police) at Bareilly junction received information on a Sarus found in an injured state on the platform.

"The police along with forest officials immediately came to the rescue. The Sarus was sent to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) in Bareilly to save its life."

The tweet shows various photos of the rescue operation, including one that matches the video shared on social media.

The Sarus crane reportedly succumbed to its injuries.

The IVRI's Dr Abhijeet Panvde was quoted as saying: "She sustained multiple injuries leading to excessive bleeding that caused her death."

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