Old crocodile video falsely linked to recent flooding in northern India in July 2023
- Published on July 19, 2023 at 11:19
- 4 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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The video, which has been shared more than 800 times, was posted on Twitter here on July 10, 2023.
The clip, filmed from a higher vantage point, shows a huge crocodile wading through a flooded street while people watch from a rooftop and balcony.
“Crocodile in the streets of Ambala #Ambala #Flood”, reads its Hindi-language caption, referring to the city in Haryana state in the country's north.
Days of intense monsoon rains across northern India rendered many areas inaccessible, with bridges smashed and roads blocked. Officials said at least 90 people lost their lives in the northern states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Haryana, according to local reports.
The monsoons make up around 80 percent of South Asia's annual rainfall, which is key to both agriculture and the livelihoods of millions, but brings with it natural disasters every year.
The same clip was shared alongside a similar claim on Twitter here; the footage was also described as being from Ambala in longer videos on Facebook here and here.
But the footage has in fact circulated since at least August 2022 in reports about a loose crocodile in Shivpuri, in central India.
Eight-foot croc
A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google led to a similar video featured in a report by the English-language daily The Times of India (TOI) on August 17, 2022 (archived link).
Its headline reads, "Madhya Pradesh: 8-foot long crocodile enters residential area in Shivpuri".
Shivpuri is a town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, approximately 550 kilometres from Ambala.
The TOI video is longer than the clip circulating on social media, but the footage from the video's 23-second mark to the 27-second mark corresponds with the video being falsely shared online.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video used in the false post (left) and the video published by TOI (right):
Local news reports here and here from August 2022 say there was flooding in several areas of Madhya Pradesh (archived links here and here).
A keyword search on Facebook found another video of the same incident shared on August 14, 2022 (archived link).
The 35-second video was recorded by journalist Monu Pradhan and shows a street-level angle of the flooded street and the crocodile.
Its Hindi-language caption says: "Shivpuri: Crocodile found near old bus stand, never seen such a big crocodile."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Facebook video from 2022 (right) with matching buildings in both videos highlighted by AFP:
Pradhan told AFP that he recorded the video when a crocodile was found in a neighbourhood near the Old Bus Stand colony in Shivpuri.
"This video was recorded by me standing in the street in 2022. At that time many people were making videos from the top of the roof and from the street," he said on July 13, 2023.
"Crocodiles coming out during the monsoon rains is a common thing in Shivpuri. The team from the national park rescues and takes them away. In 2022, this crocodile was also rescued and taken away by the national park team," he added.
According to the Hindustan Times, the crocodile was captured by a team from the nearby Madhav National Park and later released into Sankhya Sagar Lake (archived link)
An officer from the Baldev Nagar police station in Ambala also dismissed the claim the video shows a crocodile in Ambala after recent heavy rains, in an interview with TOI on July 12, 2023 (archived link).
"Whatever video went viral is fake. We patrolled the flood-affected area yesterday and today. We don't have any such information," officer Ram Kumar was quoted as saying.
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