Fact-Check: Video From Maharashtra's Nashik Viral as One From Uttar Pradesh

The video shows women in Nashik's Kharshet crossing the Tas river after a bridge was washed off in July.

Fact-Check : Video showing women crossing a river by walking on a bamboo stick is from Maharashtra's Nashik.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video, showing three women crossing a river by walking on bamboo sticks to fetch water, has gone viral on social media.

What is the claim?: The video was shared by several social media users with a claim that it is from Uttar Pradesh, thereby questioning the state of development.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Archives of more such posts can be found here and here.)

What is the truth?: The video is from Kharshet in Nashik, Maharashtra and shows women crossing the Tas River to fetch water. The video is from July this year, when an iron bridge – built in January – was washed away due to heavy rains.

How did we find that out?: We extracted keyframes from the viral video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension and ran a reverse image search on some of them.

• While going through the results, we found the same video uploaded on Twitter on 24 July, which said that it was from Nashik.

• A keyword search for "women crossing river Nashik" led us to a tweet by Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Aaditya Thackeray from 11 January.

• The tweet had a similar image of women crossing a river by walking on bamboo sticks and said that the then Maharashtra government had built a bridge for women to cross the river.

A link to the tweet can be found here.

So, how old is the photo?: Another keyword search in Marathi led us to a video uploaded on Marathi-language daily Sakal's YouTube channel. It was premiered on 21 July 2022.

Comparison between the viral video and Sakal's YouTube video.

• The video mentioned that the bridge was built in Nashik's Shendripada-Kharshat in January and was washed off in July due to heavy rains in the area.

• The reporter and locals also talked about the problems faced by people in the village to fetch water after the bridge was swept away. The same women could be seen in the backdrop while the reporter was speaking to the locals.

• We also found news reports in other publications that talked about the bridge getting swept away and added that the Nashik Zilla Parishad had instructed officials to reconstruct the bride.

• Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde also took note of the issue and directed the administration to construct the bridge.

• A local journalist from Nashik, Ram Girase, also confirmed that the video was from Nashik.

Conclusion: Social media users shared a video from Maharashtra's Nashik with a false claim that it was from Uttar Pradesh.

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