Old Video of Tractors Passing through Water Is Being Linked to Farmers’ Protests

The video could be traced back to December 2023 and is unrelated to the ongoing farmers' protest around Delhi.

Fact-check: An old video of tractors driving through water is being falsely linked with the ongoing farmers' protests.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing people driving tractors through a water body is going viral on social media to claim that this clip is from the ongoing farmers' protests near Delhi.

Who shared this?: Along with social media users, Samajwadi Party (SP) President Akhilesh Yadav and a Telugu language report of News18 also shared this video while mentioning the ongoing protests.

An archive can be seen here.

An archive can be seen here.

(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This video has been on the internet since December 2023, predating the farmers' protests.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video which led us to an old YouTube video.

• This was shared on 17 January and did not mention anything about the protests.

• It is important to note that the ongoing farmers' protests started in Noida on 6 February.

• We noticed 'PAW cheema agro farm' written on the vehicle.

We noticed text on one side of the tractor's trolley.

(Source: Screenshot)

• By performing a relevant keyword search, we came across a Facebook page about tractors.

• This page led us to an Instagram page of Taljinder Singh Cheema, who was mentioned in the Facebook posts.

• Cheema's page carried a screen recording of Yadav's post on X (formerly Twitter).

• We also found the same viral video shared as a reel with over nine million views. This was uploaded on 8 December 2023.

• We have reached out to Cheema for more details about the video and the story will be updated once we received a reply.

Conclusion: An old video of tractors driving through water is being falsely linked with the ongoing farmers' protests.

(With inputs from Aishwarya Varma.)

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