Mumbai Local Overcrowded on Resuming Services? No, Video is Old
The Western Railway also stated that “no such instance of crowd congregation” was recorded on 1 February.
A video of a crowded railway station has gone viral with the claim that it shows the situation on 1 February, when the Mumbai local trains – suspended in March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic – resumed services for the common public.
The video, however, could be traced back to at least March 2016.
CLAIM
Several users shared the video with the claim, ‘Borivali Station Today.’
One user, ‘Joshi b_jndaajtak’ on Twitter garnered over 6,200 views, while ‘Pothole Warriors’ had over 4,300 views, at the time of writing this article.
Another user on Facebook had also garnered over 4,900 views on Facebook at the time of writing this article.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
A reverse image search of one of the keyframes of the video led us to the same video, uploaded on YouTube on 21 March 2016.
Clearly, the video cannot be of the day the local trains resumed services in Mumbai in 2021.
We also found replies by the Western Railway and the on Twitter clarifying that the video was old and urging users to not share it.
The Western Railway Mumbai Central Division also stated that “sufficient uniformed staff” was deployed at stations to regulate the crowd on the day the trains resumed services.
“No such instance of crowd congregation has been reported from across suburban section,” the tweet further read.
Evidently, an old video of an overcrowded Mumbai train has been revived as a recent one.
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