Video of Kerala’s Kuthiran Tunnel Falsely Shared as Tunnel on Mumbai-Goa Highway

This video dates back to August 2021 and shows Kerala's first-ever road tunnel.

Fact-Check: An old video of a tunnel in Kerala is being shared with a false claim that it shows one on the Mumbai-Goa highway.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing motorcyclists entering a tunnel, while a crowd cheers them on, is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows the Konkan Kashedi tunnel on the Mumbai-Goa highway.

However, the video could be traced back to 2021 and it actually shows the Kuthiran tunnel in Kerala. This tunnel's first side was opened for traffic in July 2021 and the second side opened in January 2022.

CLAIM

The caption with the viral video suggests that it shows the Konkan Kashedi tunnel on the Mumbai-Goa highway.

A lot of posts had captions in Marathi which gave credit to Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport and highways, for building the Konkan Kashedi tunnel.

An archive version of the post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Similar posts can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We divided the videos into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on them. This led us to a tweet by an account called '@indianroadie' from August 2021 which carried the same video.

The tweet said, "#KuthiranTunnel on #NH47 connecting Palakkad and Thrissur opened in early August 2021 (sic)."

Taking a cue from the tweet, we searched for Kuthiran tunnel, Kerala on Google Maps and found images that matched the location seen in the viral video.

The video matches the location of Kuthiran Tunnel, Kerala.

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

Next, we looked on the National Highways Authority of India's official Twitter account for pictures of the Kuthiran tunnel and found this tweet:

The tweet carried an image of a tunnel which matches the tunnel seen in the viral video.

The Kuthiran tunnel's second opening on the Mannuthy-Vadakkencherry stretch of the national highway opened for traffic on 21 January 2022. The first side of the tunnel was opened on 31 July 2021. This twin tunnel of 1.6 km is Kerala’s first-ever road tunnel and south India’s longest six-lane road tunnel.

Clearly, an old video of this tunnel in Kerala is being shared with a false claim that it shows the one on the Mumbai-Goa highway.

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