These images have circulated in reports about a collision in India in 2019
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 1, 2020 at 04:05
- 3 min read
- By AFP Sri Lanka
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The photos were published on Facebook here on June 17, 2020. The post has been shared more than 1,200 times.
The Sinhala-language text alongside the photos translates to English as: “Crashed into the train/ Imagine the kind of pain it must be going through/ Let’s wish for a speedy recovery”.
The post circulated as Sri Lanka continues to debate the issue of elephants being killed or injured by trains.
Several comments on the post showed that other Facebook users believed the incident occurred in Sri Lanka. One user, for example, wrote: “Good for nothing governments. Still no solution to these issues here”.
Another commenter wrote: “Injuries to elephants, this is a grave issue here. A prompt solution is needed because animals too need to live in this world, not just humans….If the train is damaged this bad because of a collision into an elephant, the safety of the passengers is 0, Indian fiber trash...”
The two photos were also shared alongside a similar claim in 2019 on Facebook here and here.
The claim, however, is misleading.
Reverse Google image searches of the photos found that they have in fact circulated in reports about an incident in India since 2019.
The photos were published here on an online forum that hosts discussion about railways in India. According to the blog, the collision between the train and elephant in the photos occurred on a railway between the notheastern cities of Siliguri and Dhubri.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the images in the forum (L) and the images in the misleading post (R):
The collision between the elephant and the train was also reported on in this article by India Today, an Indian news magazine.
The report, published on September 27, 2019, is titled: “Train hits and critically injures elephant in North Bengal. Devastating video goes viral”.
“The engine of the train hit an elephant that was trying to cross the tracks in the jungle. The hit left the animal severely injured, and a video of the accident has made it to social media,” the article reads.
The specific train route, India Today’s report added, runs through “several elephant corridors” and is “notorious for elephant deaths”.
A notice about the collision was also posted on the official Facebook page of the NorthEast Frontier Railway on September 28, 2019.
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