Lighthouse Journalism came across a video being widely shared on social media platforms, especially X. In the video a few boys were seen indulging in vandalising the railway tracks. Official handle of Indian railways and Union minister of railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw was also tagged in the post. During the investigation we found that the video is from Pakistan and not India.
Claim:
X user X Secular shared the viral video on his handle.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other social media users are also sharing the video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and then running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
We found the video uploaded on a Facebook page named Momentique News. The video was uploaded on 6th December 2023.
The caption stated (translation): Valuable goods of railway line are being stolen near Sir Taj Khan Pahatk Boat Basin outpost for many days. PS Boat Basin is requested to take this action.
The hashtags used in the caption suggested that the video is from Pakistan.
We also found the video uploaded on the Facebook page, Pakistani Trains. The video was posted on December 5, 2023.
The video was captioned (translation): Near Sir Taj Khan Pahatk Boat Basin Chowki, the valuable goods of railway line are being stolen a lot. P.S. Boat Basin is requested to take this action.
We found that there is a Boat Basin police chowki in Karachi, Pakistan.
Conclusion: Old video from Karachi, Pakistan of railway track vandalism falsely shared as that from India. Viral claims are misleading.
