Lighthouse Journalism found a video being shared on social media websites. The 2 minute video showcases the process of railway track laying , it is being claimed that the video is from India. Upon investigating it was found that the video is not from India but from Malaysia.
Claim:
X user the Hindu Sena shared the viral video on their profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the video with similar claims.
Investigation:
Upon observing the video, ‘China Communications Construction’ was found written over the machine.
We then selected some keyframes from the video to run the reverse image search on the same.
On running a reverse image search we found a tweet by China Focus, which had pictures of the machine, similar to that shown in the video. The post was shared on December 12, 2023.
We found the video posted by profile, ‘Sharing Travel’. The caption mentioned, ‘Malaysia’s East Coast Railway began laying tracks’. This post was shared on January 9, 2024.
We found a few reports about the railway track laying.
We also found the video of the track laying ceremony on YouTube.
The images shared in the news report and the keyframes obtained from the video were similar.
Conclusion: Video of track laying of Malaysian East Coast Rail Link (ECRL), a mega railway project under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is being peddled as video of track laying from India.
