Fact-Check: Old, Unrelated Video Shared as Factory Blasts in West Bengal
The video could be traced back to March 2022 and reportedly shows the visuals of the Pooram festival in Kerala.
advertisement
A video which shows an explosion in an open field is being shared with a claim that it shows visuals from the recent blast that happened in a factory in West Bengal’s East Medinipur.
What are users claiming?: People have shared the video with a caption, that when translated from Hindi to English using Google Translate, said, “Look at West Bengal sitting on a powder keg. This scene of East Medinipur is horrifying. Mamta has no control over the state. There is no idea of law and order. Jungle Raj remains.”
The video had recorded more than 3,80,000 views at the time of writing this report.
(More archives of similar posts can be found here, here, and here.)
Are these claims true?: Neither is the video recent nor is it related to the recent blast in West Bengal. It could be traced back at least March 2022 and reportedly shows the visuals of Pooram festival in Kerala.
How did we find out?: Using a video verification tool, InVID, we divided the viral video into several keyframes and performed a reverse image search on them.
This led us to an Instagram post which carried the same video.
A user named 'mr.palakkadan' uploaded the video on 1 April and identified the location as Kavassery, which is a place in Kerala.
On performing a keyword search, we came across the video on an unverified YouTube channel.
The video dated back to 17 March 2022 and its title mentioned that the visuals are from the Pooram festival.
Details about Pooram festival: It is annual festival in Kavassery, where there is a temple named Parakkat Sree Bhagavathy Temple. The temple's festival is called Pooram. It usually happens during the month of April and bursting firecrackers is a part of the festivity.
Other videos of the festival: On going through several other videos on YouTube which showed fireworks during the festival, we found several similarities.
West Bengal police clarifies: The state's police took to their official Twitter handle to clarify that the video is being falsely linked to the blast in Egra.
They added that the visuals are from the Pooram festival in Kerala.
It further said, "#WBP appeals to all to refrain from circulation of fake news and warns strict action against the violators."
What happened in East Medinipur?: An explosion happened at an alleged illegal firecracker unit in Egra, which claimed the lives of at least nine people and left two injured, The Indian Express reported.
ABP Ananda uploaded visuals from the incident, which can be seen below.
Conclusion: While we were not able to verify the location independently, it is clear the video is old and unrelated to the blasts that happened in East Medinipur area of West Bengal.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)