Lighthouse Journalism came across a video being shared on social media platforms. It was claimed in the video that it showed a mosque set on fire in India. During the investigation, we found that the video was not from India but from Indonesia. The viral claim is misleading.
Claim:
X user @ImranHosse5342 shared the video on his profile with a misleading claim.
Other users also shared the video with a similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
This led us to a report on Tolitoli News published on 8 December.
The caption mentioned (translation): A great fire broke out in the Central Market, Luwuk, Banggai, on Sunday, December 8, 2024 morning. This location is reportedly that in the near future a Mall will be built, even the Disperindag party is said to have done socialization to the residents of the site that has the last remaining pieces.
On keyword search, we found that Central Market, Luwuk, Banggai is in Indonesia.
We also found a video report about it on the Facebook page of POS – KUPANG.COM
We then geolocated the mosque on Google Maps. The location was Masjid AL – IKHSAN Pasar Sentral, a mosque in the same area in Indonesia. A comparison between the Google images and the keyframes from the viral post confirmed that the incident had happened in Indonesia.
Conclusion: The viral video claimed to be of a mosque set on fire in India is actually from an incident in Indonesia. The viral claim is misleading.
