Clip shows tremor in Pakistan, not India

Published on February 26, 2025 at 09:46
2 min read
By Sachin BAGHEL, AFP India

Tremors from a magnitude 4.0 earthquake jolted India's capital awake on February 17 but footage of a violently shaking structure that surfaced online was not filmed in New Delhi. The CCTV clip shows an earlier quake in neighbouring Pakistan.

"CCTV footage of 4.0 Earthquake in Delhi, India this morning," reads a post on X that shared the video on February 17, 2025.

A pre-dawn quake in the sprawling Indian megacity shook buildings but there were no immediate reports of major damage (archived link).

Screenshot of the false post taken on February 18, 2025

The video was also misrepresented in other social media posts about the New Delhi tremor but a reverse image search of keyframes on Google found it posted on X a day earlier on February 16, 2025 (archived link).

Its caption reads: "Just Look at the Blast and Wave it was something else still thinking about it. My Home CCTV video."

AFP reached out to X user Muhammad Abdullah Hashmi who said the clip was recorded on his home CCTV in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

Date and time stamps visible on the upper right corner of the footage coincide with the timing of an earthquake that struck Islamabad and nearby Rawalpindi.

Local media reported the 4.8 magnitude quake occurred at 10.48 PM Pakistan Standard Time on February 15, 2025 (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (L) and the clip on X with the timestamp highlighted

Hashmi also provided AFP with a photo and video he took following the earthquake, showing the same location seen in the circulating footage.

Screenshot comparison of the video (L) and photo from the X user with corresponding elements highlighted by AFP

AFP has repeatedly debunked misrepresented videos and images following earthquakes.

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