Footage of water tanker spraying urinating man is from Peru, not India

Published on July 28, 2025 at 10:50
3 min read
By Akshita KUMARI, AFP India

After Indore was named the cleanest Indian city in a recent government survey, footage of a man urinating in public and being blasted with water from a tanker vehicle circulated on social media with a false claim that it was filmed there. Some users believe the clip shows how the central Indian city was able to stay clean, but it was actually shot in Lima, Peru.

"This is Indore. They absolutely don't tolerate any filth. Now this guy will never do something like this again in his life," reads a Hindi-language post shared on Facebook on July 22, 2025.

The post, which received more than 18,000 views, shares a 25-second video showing a water tanker spraying a man urinating in public.

Screenshot of the Facebook post captured on July 23, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The post circulated days after Indore was declared the cleanest city in India in an annual government survey (archived link).

The same footage with similar claims was also shared on Facebook, Instagram, Thread and X, drawing user comments suggesting that they believed it to be from Indore.

"That's why my Indore is number one in cleanliness," wrote one.

Another said: "Such people should be treated this way so that they never dare to make a mess again."

But the footage was not actually filmed in India.

A reverse image search with keyframes from the video revealed that the same footage was shared on Facebook on March 15 with a Spanish-language caption saying it shows a water truck spraying water on a man urinating near a train station in Lima (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the false post (L) and the video published on Facebook

Additional searches found other posts on Facebook also saying the incident took place in Lima near the metro tracks (archived here and here).

A building named "Cinemark" can be seen in the video -- which AFP geolocated to the Peruvian capital using Google Street View imagery (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (L) and Google Street View imagery, with matching features highlighted by AFP

Further keyword searches found a report published by local newspaper La Republica published a report on March 15, 2025, which also stated the incident was filmed in Lima (archived link).

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