A video showing a jeep getting swept away by floodwater has gone viral with a claim that it is from Telangana's Jagtial, where a journalist died after his vehicle was washed away.
On 12 July, a reporter working with the Telugu news channel NTV, Zameer, had gone missing after the car he was travelling in got washed away due to incessant rains in the state. His body was recovered on Friday, 15 July.
However, we found that the viral video was at least two years old and from Pakistan. Moreover, the vehicle the scribe was travelling in was a red colour Swift Dzire while the vehicle in the viral video was a jeep.
CLAIM
The claim was shared by several users on Facebook and Twitter, with captions that read, "#Scribe washed away in flood water in #Jagtial #Telangana. He was on his way to cover rescue operation of 9 laborers stranded in an island middle of #godavari river in Raikal mandal."
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.
While going through the search results, we came across the same video posted on YouTube in 2020.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: YouTube/Screenshot)
The caption of the YouTube video said, "Accident of potohar jeep due to flood (sic)."
We also found the same video on YouTube as a short and the caption said that the video was from Balochistan.
We looked up Suzuki Jeep Potohar and found that this version of Suzuki's Jeeps was made and sold in Pakistan.
Comparison of the vehicle in the viral video with a Jeep Potodar.
(Photo: The Quint)
We then observed the licence plate on the jeep and noticed that it wasn't in the Indian format.
Vehicle licence plate number.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
We checked for licence plate numbers in Balochistan and found that the registration numbers are in a similar format as seen in the viral video - XX - 1234.
A link to the article can be found here.
(Source: Research Gate/Screenshot)
WHAT HAPPENED TO SCRIBE IN TELANGANA?
A journalist with Telugu news channel NTV, Zameer, went missing on 12 July while he was on his way to cover the rain situation in Telangana's Jagtial district. He was on his way to Bornapalli village in Raikal mandal to report on nine farm labourers who were trapped in the Godavari floods.
According to news reports, he was travelling in Swift Dzire car and the car was washed away by the floodwaters near Ramojipet village. The scribe's dead body was recovered on 15 July.
Senior reporter covering Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, Surya Reddy, shared a video of the car being pulled out of floodwaters. The video shows that Zameer was travelling in a red car and not a jeep, as seen in the viral video.
Evidently, an old video from Pakistan was shared by several people on the internet with a claim that it was from Pakistan showing the moment a Telugu journalist's car was swept away due to floodwaters.
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