Footage of train driver holding umbrella not filmed in India's Kerala in 2023

“Dear @narendramodi please stop making things. Clearly you are utterly incapable to make anything right," reads a tweet posted on April 26, attracting more than 800 retweets.

""VANDE BHARAT" on the 1st day of inauguration rainwater started leaking from the roof of VB in Kerala. A picture is worth a thousand words."

Modi inaugurated a Vande Bharat train on April 25 in the southern state of Kerala.

The semi-high-speed train cuts the travel time between the state capital Thiruvananthapuram and Kasaragod to eight hours from 12-13 hours, The Hindustan Times reported (archived link).

Image

Screenshot of a tweet sharing the false claim, taken on May 2, 2023

The photo was also shared in similar posts criticising Modi on Facebook here and here and on Twitter.

However, video of the incident circulated online two years before India inaugurated the first semi-high-speed Vande Bharat train in February 2019 (archived link).

A reverse image search on Google found the video in a tweet by Indian journalist Sucheta Dalal on August 9, 2017.

"Railway safety?" she wrote, calling on the railways ministry to "take a serious look" at the issue.

The footage shows the driver holding an umbrella, while a man off-camera says in Hindi that "water is leaking from the roof of the locomotive" and complaining that "this is where we keep our bags but can't because of water".

Image

Footage of the locomotive driver holding an umbrella, posted on Twitter in 2017

The railways ministry replied to another journalist who reposted Dalal's tweet, saying it was investigating the incident.

Furthermore, the incident did not happen in Kerala state, as the posts falsely claim.

At the eight-second mark, the train speeds past a railway station sign for Bermo, which is a town in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

Image

Screenshot of the video showing a railway sign for Bermo

The Indian Express reported on the incident in 2017 (archived link).

Image