Clip shows fire drill ahead of Kumbh Mela, not blaze that 'injured eight at festival hospital'

"A huge fire broke out at a hospital in the Maha Kumbh Mela area," read the Hindi-language caption of a video shared on X on January 13, 2025.

Text on the video says eight people had been injured.

It was shared as millions of Hindu pilgrims gathered in the northern Indian city of Prayagraj for the great or "Maha" Kumbh Mela, a millennia-old show of religious piety and ritual bathing that lasts for six weeks from January 13 (archived link).

Organisers predicted up to 400 million pilgrims would attend the festival, the world's largest gathering of humanity.

Prayagraj, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, is one of four locations that alternate as hosts for the immense gathering. According to Hindu mythology, the four sites are where drops from a sacred pitcher containing the nectar of immortality fell as deities and demons fought over it.

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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on January 23, 2025

The same footage was shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on X and Instagram.

Crowd accidents often plague religious events in India, where large numbers of people pack into congested areas.

The Kumbh Mela -- with its unfathomable throngs of devotees -- has a grim track record of deadly crowd crushes. A stampede at the religious gathering in the early hours of January 29 killed at least 15 people, a doctor at a hospital tending to survivors told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to talk to media (archived link).

While a fire did break out at the Kumbh Mela a week after the video circulated online, no injuries were reported (archived link).

The video shared online in fact shows a fire drill held weeks before the festival.

Fire drill

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to an X post by the Uttar Pradesh police (archived link).

The January 13 post said the video showed a fire drill, and they were taking action against individuals who misrepresented the footage as showing a real fire.

It added: "It is advised not to share information without proper verification.”

Rajiv Kumar, chief fire officer of Prayagraj, also told AFP on January 21: "This was a mock drill conducted by the state disaster management team to assess preparedness before the event began.

"We will take legal action against those sharing this clip with false claims."

Separate reverse image searches led to the same footage shared on Facebook but with different superimposed text (archived link).

In one video posted on Facebook, the text reads: "A trial of kumbh mela fire accident in hospital. Demo." The video also contains a watermark that reads, "Backpacker Praveen".

Below is a screenshot comparison between the falsely shared video (left) and the same footage posted on Facebook with different superimposed text (right):

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Screenshot comparison between the falsely shared video (left) and the same footage posted on Facebook with different superimposed text (right)

Praveen Kumar, who posts photos and clips about his travels around India as "Backpacker Praveen", told AFP he had filmed the video (archived link).

"This was a mock drill video shot on December 27, 2024. It has nothing to do with a real incident," he said on January 23.

"Many people started sharing this video with false claims, so I decided to remove it from my social media," he said.

AFP has debunked other false claims about the Kumbh Mela here and here.

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