A video which shows a few men and women jumping off the balcony of what looks like a shopping complex, is being massively shared on Facebook with a claim that the video shows how certain women are flouting the norms and are going out to shop despite the lockdown amid the coronavirus scare.
However, we found out that the video is from Pakistan’s Karachi and is as old as 2015.
CLAIM
The message shared along with the video reads, “Aaj ki taza khabar yeh aourton ko shopping ke baghair chain naheen padhta, lock down mein police ne owner ko baher karke showroom ko lock kardiye, lekin yeh ladies ooper store mein chup gayee thein , musalman sudhar nahi sakta hai. Yeh kanpur ka hai video.”
(Translation: Today’s breaking news, these women can’t live without shopping. During the lockdown, the cops locked the showroom but these women hid in the store room upstairs. Muslims can never mend their ways. This video is from Kanpur.)
Another rendition of this message didn’t mention the location, but had the exact same claim.
(An archived version of the post can be seen here)
The message is being widely circulated on Facebook.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On fragmenting the video into several keyframes and then conducting a reverse search, we came across a Reddit thread which had the same video. In the comments section below, we saw a YouTube link which was nearly five years old and had also carried the same visuals.
The description of this video mentioned that the video showed sex workers feeling after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) raided a brother in Karachi. Taking a cue from here, we conducted a relevant keyword search on Google and came across a report by Pakistan news channel ARY News, which too mentioned the same details.
Further, if one listens to the video carefully, at around 2:12 minutes, the person in the video can be heard saying ‘chapa pada hai bhai, FIA wale ka’ which loosely translates to ‘FIA has raided the place’.
Clearly, a five-year-old video is being circulated to claim that women are flouting lockdown norms and going out to shop.
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