Lighthouse Journalism found a video being shared widely on social media platforms. The video showed a huge stash of cash being kept in a room, the viral claim along with the video stated that the cash was seized by Pune rural police worth Rs 5 crore from the vehicle at Shivapur toll. During the investigation, we found the viral video is old and not related to the recent incident.
Claim:
Instagram user Lokmat Times, shared the video along with the news report on their Instagram handle.
Other users too are sharing the video with the same claim.
The video was also posted by NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) leader Rohit Pawar too shared the viral video.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained using the InVid tool.
During the investigation we found the same video uploaded on YouTube channel Suresh Kumar Vlogs.
The video which had over 12 million views was posted on May 9, 2021.
This was the same video that was being widely shared now.
We also found the video on another YouTube channel uploaded three years ago.
Another YouTube channel UniqueMultiAdvertisement had also shared the video on September 11, 2021. The video had 1.1 million views.
The cash Rs 5 crore was seized by Pune police ahead of the recent assembly election in Maharashtra from a four-wheeler. The cash was recovered at Khed Shivapur toll plaza.
Political tensions escalated when Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut claimed that the cash belonged to a sitting MLA from Shiv Sena.
However, since the incident happened just a couple of days ago, the video of cash stashed in a room could not be from the same incident. The video has been shared on the internet for the last three years.
Conclusion: Old video from 2021 of cash stashed in a room goes viral claiming to be money seized by Pune police officials recently at the Shivapur toll plaza. Viral claim is misleading.
