Video shows goats being thrown from truck in India, not sheep thieves in South Africa

"FLYING SHEEP? ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WHEN CRIMINALS SET THEIR EYES ON THE TARGET!" reads a tweet which includes a short video recorded from another vehicle.

The clip captures the moment several animals are being thrown from the back of a moving truck and land on a busy road at night. The footage ends with what looks like a man jumping off the truck onto the bonnet of a waiting car.

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A screenshot of the misleading tweet, taken on May 29, 2023

The tweet tags the Twitter accounts of South African safety agencies, including local, provincial and national police and traffic departments.

The Twitter account behind the post has 82,000 followers and purports to show "realistic SOUTH AFRICAN current CRIME and related affairs (sic)".

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A screenshot of the Twitter account’s bio, taken on May 30, 2023

Replies to the misleading tweet show that some users believe the incident took place in South Africa.

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A screenshot of replies to the tweet, taken on May 29, 2023

South Africa has a notoriously high crime rate. Police statistics released on May 30, 2023, revealed 6,289 people were murdered between January and March 2023 – an increase of 3.4 percent compared to the same period last year (archived here).

At the same time, there were 10,512 recorded rapes and an increase of more than 20 percent in cash-in-transit robberies.

But while the country's violent and petty crime remains a scourge, the video in the tweet was not taken in South Africa.

Indian incident

A reverse image search using InVID-WeVerify revealed that publications in India reported on the video (archived here, here and here) at the beginning of May 2023.

Social media posts speculated where the incident took place, with claims ranging from Pakistan to the Kanpur Unnao Highway in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state.

However, police in Uttar Pradesh responded on Twitter, clarifying that the footage shows Igatpur Ghoti Road in Maharashtra state, in western India (archived).

Their tweet included a geolocation of the road by isolating a large road sign in the video.

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A screenshot of the tweet reply by Indian police, taken on May 30, 2023

AFP Fact Check performed the same geolocation exercise with Google Maps and found other matching markers.

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Screenshots comparing the video to Google Maps, taken on May 30, 2023

A debunk by India Today on May 2, 2023, (archived here), in response to viral false claims. It quoted assistant police inspector Dilip Khedkar of the Ghoti police station as saying that while he was aware of this incident, he could not say when the video was recorded.

AFP Fact Check in India confirmed this with a police official from Maharashtra who said no complaint was filed but that they were looking into the matter.