Video shows Indonesia bus plunge, not India crash

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 2, 2023 at 11:21
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India, AFP Indonesia

Dramatic footage of a bus hurtling down a slope has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in social media posts that falsely claim the incident happened in the mountainous state of Meghalaya in northeastern India. The crash shown in the clip, however, took place in Indonesia's Central Java province.

"Meghalaya driver went to drink tea, leaving the bus engine on," reads a Hindi-language tweet posted on May 17, 2023, referring to the mountainous northeastern Indian state that borders Bangladesh.

"He forgot to apply the handbrake, the bus fell into a ditch," the tweet adds.

It features a video that first shows a bus rolling down a slope before it plunges down a ravine. It then cuts to a clip showing bystanders running to the crash site and people trying to rescue passengers inside the bus.

The one-minute video has been viewed more than 17,300 times.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on May 22, 2023

The video has garnered more than 525,000 views after it circulated on Facebook alongside a similar claim in Hindi and in English, as well as in a Punjabi-language page here.

Road crash deaths in India are among the highest in the world with an estimated one crash death happening every four minutes, according to a World Bank report released in 2021.

Indonesia bus crash

But the video shows a giant sticker that says "Pariwisata" -- Indonesian word for "Tour" -- on the back window of the bus.

A search of relevant Indonesian keywords on Google found a video report posted on the YouTube channel of Indonesian media outlet Merdeka.com on May 7, 2023 (archived link).

According to the report, the tourist bus fell into the ravine of Awu River at Guci tourist site in Tegal regency, in Indonesia's Central Java province, that Sunday morning.

"A number of residents who witnessed the incident cried hysterically. They helped to rescue the passengers inside the bus," the video's description said.

Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the false posts (left) and the video from Merdeka.com (right):

Screenshot comparisons of the video in the false post (left) and the genuine video from Merdeka.com (right)

In the video, people can also be heard speaking in Javanese, a language widely spoken in Central Java.

At the 32-second mark of the video in the false posts, a woman can be heard saying, "Oh, it fell into the river!" while at the 52-second mark, a man says: "Oh, there are people."

The video was also used in reports on the Tegal bus crash by other Indonesian news outlets on the same day, such as Tribun Jateng and Berita Satu (archived links here and here).

AFP geolocated the crash site to Karangsari Road in Guci (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in one of the false posts (left) and Google Street View imagery of the crash location (right), with corresponding features marked by AFP:

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Google Street View imagery (right)

Local media reported the driver and the conductor were not inside the bus when the parked vehicle rolled down into the ravine, causing deaths of two passengers and injuries of dozens others (archived links here and here).

The two were reportedly arrested but had been released from detention while the investigation was ongoing (archived link).

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