Video shows children playing with old banknotes in India, not Pakistan

Published on October 6, 2025 at 09:13
2 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

Footage showing a couple of boys waving bundles of demonetised Indian currency notes circulated online in posts that falsely claimed it showed 500 rupee ($5) notes discontinued in India, dumped in neighboring Pakistan. But the content creator who filmed the video told AFP it was shot in India's northern Lucknow city in 2024.

"Our old Indian 500 rupee notes in Pakistan. Old paper mart boys are flaunting it from their waste collecting handcart. Now people will understand why our beloved PM Modi Ji called for demonitisation," reads an X post shared on September 22, 2025.

The post includes a video that shows a couple of boys waving bundles of demonetised 500 rupee notes as a person filming them asks for some of it.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in November 2016 that 500 and 1,000-rupee notes would no longer be legal tender in a bid to tackle corruption and tax evasion (archived link).

Modi's shock decision to pull 86 percent of the currency from circulation triggered a chronic shortage of cash (archived link).

Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured September 25, with a red X mark added by AFP

The clip circulated with similar claims in Instagram and X posts.

But the video was filmed in India in 2024.

Reverse image search on Google using keyframes found the video uploaded on Instagram on December 27, 2024 (archived link).

The person filming the video can be heard speaking in Hindi, "Brother, give me a note; I just need one to take a photo. See, money has no value."

Screenshot comparison of the false post video (L) and the Instagram video

AFP contacted content creator Brijesh Mishra, who confirmed he filmed the video in Lucknow in December 2024.

"Some people are now sharing it with a claim that it's from Pakistan, which is completely false. That is why I went back a few days later and made a longer video with the boys," Mishra told AFP on September 26, 2025.

AFP found another video uploaded on Mishra's YouTube channel on January 2, 2025, where he speaks with the same children seen in the false post clip (archived link). In this video, the children tell Mishra they found these notes in the garbage recently.

The location shown in the video matches with Google Street View imagery of a traffic roundabout in Lucknow, confirming it was not filmed in Pakistan (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the false post video (L) and the Google Maps Imagery, with similarities highlighted by AFP

AFP has previously debunked misinformation around demonetised Indian currency.

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