Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms. The claim stated that the two trains suffered a head-on collision near Bikaner. During investigation we found that the video is actually from a mock drill and not of the real accident.
Claim:
X user Praveen Panghal shared the video and also tagged Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw in the post.
Other users too are sharing the video with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
We found a video report on YouTube, by SSSO News. The description of the video mentioned that this showed a mock drill.
We found a news report about this mock drill on patrika.com.
The report mentioned: Today, the railways conducted a mock drill at the Lalgarh station yard in Bikaner division to evaluate rescue preparedness during a rail accident. The exercise involved simulating an accident scenario to assess the responsiveness of health services, administrative authorities, and rescue teams from the NDRF, SDRF, and civil departments. The staged accident depicted a collision between two coaches during shunting operations, with one coach mounting another.
We found similar news stories on other media websites too.
Conclusion: Video of a mock drill conducted by railways in Bikaner at the Lalgarh station yard to evaluate rescue preparedness is being shared as that of a real railway accident. Viral claim is misleading.
