Old Photo of Mumbai Road Filled With Potholes Shared as Varanasi

The photograph of the road filled with potholes was shared four years ago with yet another misleading claim.

Fact-Check | The photograph of road full of potholes was from Mumbai and not Varanasi. 

(Photo: The Quint)

An old photograph from Mumbai showing several potholes on a road has been shared by several social media users as that of Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi.

The photo, which dates back to 2017, was taken by The Times of India photojournalist SL Shanth Kumar and was from Sion area of Mumbai.

We also found the same photograph was previously shared by users as different Indian cities and it became a template for a memes with people referring to the potholes as craters on the moon.

CLAIM

The photograph was shared with a text caption written on it that read: "नासा के सेटेलाइट ने बताया कि चाँद पर लोग आते जाते देखे जा रहे हैं, लेकिन PWD ने खंडन करते हुए कहा कि यह चाँद नहीं ये तो वाराणसी की सड़क है|"

(Translation: NASA's satellite said that people were seen walking on the moon, but PWD refuted that it is not the moon, it is a road in Varanasi.)

An archive of the post can be found here.

Archives of more such posts on Facebook and Twitter can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a reverse image search of the viral photograph and found versions of the photo on meme websites and it was used as a template by some people to create memes by changing the name of the city/place they wanted to comment on.

Upon going through the results some more, we found that the image was posted by The Times of India photojournalist, SL Shanth Kumar, on his Instagram profile.

The photograph was titled, "Meteor shower in Sion" and the caption of the image said, "A road at Pratiksha nagar speaks volumes of BMC apathy. Few spells of rains have washed away the so-called repair work by the civic body and the motorists are bearing the brunt".

Sion is a neighbourhood in Mumbai, Maharashtra.

We also found that the image was previously shared by people as that from Bengaluru it was fact-checked by Outlook in 2017.

An archvie of the post can be found here.

Talking to Outlook, Kumar had said that he took the photograph and the copyright for the same was with the newspaper. He added that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) was forced to take steps to fix the road after his photo went viral.

However, while the viral photograph is not from Varanasi, recent reports from the place say that road conditions there are not good either. A recent video report on ABP Ganga showed that roads in Varanasi were also riddled with potholes. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has launched a month-long drive to have "pothole-free" roads in UP.

Evidently, an old photograph of a road full of potholes has been shared with a false claim that it shows the situation in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.

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