Lighthouse Journalism came across a video of an encroachment drive being shared on several social media platforms. Users were claiming that the video is from Ayodhya and the users were connecting this post to the recent loss of BJP in Faizabad that houses Ayodhya Ram temple. During the investigation we found that the video is old and from Maharashtra and not from Ayodhya.
Claim:
X user Hansraj Meena shared the viral video on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the post with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and obtaining several keyframes. We then ran a Google reverse image search on the keyframes.
This led us to a post on X from February 26, 2024.
This suggests that the video is old.
The video that was falsely shared as that from Ayodhya had a watermark with the name, ‘JaiHindShakeelKhan‘.
We found this user’s profile on Instagram. We found that the user is a photojournalist with the Lokmat group. Going through his profile, we found the reel posted on Instagram.
There were other such similar reels.
A news report posted on the user’s profile suggested that this encroachment drive was conducted in Vishranti Nagar from Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar (Aurangabad) near Mukundwadi Railway Station. The news was posted on February 22nd this year.
We found news reports about this incident too.
In the next step of investigation we reached out to Shakeel Khan, who posted the video on his Instagram profile. He informed us that he took the video of the encroachment drive on 22nd February at Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar.
Conclusion: Old video from Maharashtra, goes viral as that of Ayodhya after election results. Viral claims are misleading.
