Old clip falsely portrayed as 'collapsing road in India's Ayodhya city in 2024'
- Published on July 12, 2024 at 04:01
- 3 min read
- By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India
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The video was shared with the false claim on social media platform X on July 3, 2024.
It shows someone walking on a road and falling off a portion that suddenly caves in.
"Rampath road in Ayodhya is in this condition after first rain," read part of the post's caption, referring to a newly-built city road in the holy northern city that local media reported saw parts collapse from monsoon floods the previous month (archived link).
The post then appeared to criticise the quality of recent infrastructure in Ayodhya.
The city saw an influx of projects alongside the construction of a grand temple to the deity Ram that was built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque razed by Hindu zealots in 1992 (archived link).
Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the temple in January in a ceremony widely celebrated across India with back-to-back television coverage and street parties.
The video was also shared alongside similar claims on Facebook.
It was also shared in other posts that falsely linked it to Gujarat state, where road cave-ins were also recently reported (archived link).
The state is a stronghold of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
Brazil news reports
A reverse image search on Google, however, found the video has been flipped horizontally from footage published by Brazilian media outlet UOL on June 2, 2022 (archived link).
The report stated that it shows security camera footage of a woman falling in a crater in Cascavel municipality in Brazil's northeast Ceará state.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false posts (left) and footage uploaded in the media report (right):
A yellow bus appearing at the 10-second mark of the video has "Escolar" -- meaning "school" in Portuguese -- written on its side. School buses in Brazil often come with an "Escolar" signage.
Local media g1 and O Povo also shared the video in reports about the incident from Cascavel, saying the sidewalk gave way due to heavy rains in the area (archived links here and here).
Police in Ayodhya also debunked claims about the video in a statement on X on July 4, 2024.
Police superintendent Madhuvan Kumar Singh said a case has been registered against two individuals for sharing it on social media (archived link).
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