CLAIM
Vivek Agnihotri has put out a tweet with a video, which shows a flooded street, down which a signal post can be seen floating. His tweet is directed towards the Traffic Police of Mumbai, asking them, "How much fine if the signal crosses the road?”
The archived version of his tweet can be viewed here.
Agnihotri's implication is that the video is of a street in Mumbai, which faced widespread flooding on Wednesday, 4 September after heavy rains.
His tweet comes in the background of amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act that came into effect on 1 September, which hugely increased penalties for driving errors, dangerous driving, violations of road regulations etc. In his tweet, Agnihotri is taking a dig at the increased traffic penalties.
HOW TRUE IS IT?
The video does not show a road in Mumbai but is actually from China. Therefore, Agnihotri's tweet is misleading and he has used a video taken out of context to take a dig at the new increased penalties under the Motor Vehicles Act.
WHAT WE FOUND
On conducting a reverse image search using Invid, we came across a video on YouTube from June 2018 which claimed that it happened in China.
Moreover, on looking at the video closely, various pointers implied that the incident actually from China.
The below screenshot of the hoarding outside a shop shows that it has lettering in Mandarin.
A two-wheeler parked in the vicinity, which can be seen in the video also has Mandarin lettering.
Another shop or a commercial outlet that was in the shot also had a board with Mandarin lettering on it.
On searching for videos or news reports with the keywords ‘signal floats down road in China’, The Quint came across a video titled “Watch Traffic Light Float Down Flooded Street in China” on the website The Weather Channel which placed the event in Yulin County in southern China’s Guangxi Province.
Uploaded in June 2018, the video – dating back to 20 May 2018 – showed the same signal post floating down the flooded road, albeit from a different angle and different part of the street.
In the below video, the same street can be seen, with the same board and the same car parked outside it.
The video uploaded by The Weather Channel was attributed to People’s Daily China, which is the largest newspaper group in the country. Using the keywords ‘People's Daily China Yulin county traffic light’, The Quint came across the original video uploaded on People’s Daily’s Twitter handle on 14 June 2018.
It can be seen that it is the exact same video as the one uploaded by Agnihotri on Thursday to imply that the incident happened in Mumbai.
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