Old video shows motorbike falling into a pothole in Sri Lanka, not India
"What is the point of charging so much tax from Indians? Free swimming and adventure with hospital bills," reads part of an Instagram post shared on June 1, 2025.
The attached video shows two people riding on a motorcycle unexpectedly plunging into a water-filled pothole, and bystanders rushing to help them.
"Thanks to Nitin Gadkari for providing roads better than US standard," adds the post, referring to India's minister for road transportation and highways.
Image
Screenshot of the false Instagram post, captured on June 15, 2025
The video was also shared alongside similar claims on Facebook and X posts.
"Everything is possible if Modi is there", read a comment on one of the post.
Another said: "The common people just pay taxes, and that money gets wasted in corruption."
India is hit by torrential rains and flash floods every year during the monsoon season, which is vital for agriculture, the livelihoods of millions of farmers and food security. But the monsoon also brings destruction in landslides and floods (archived link).
According to the BBC, India's biggest cities flood every monsoon season causing roads to collapse, drains to overflow and overwhelming infrastructure (archived link).
"Experts blame rapid unplanned urbanisation, poor infrastructure and years of environmental neglect as the root causes of this problem," reads the BBC report.
The video circulating online, however, was not filmed in India.
Pothole in Sri Lanka
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video led to longer footage published on the verified Facebook account of Sri Lankan news outlet News First on September 19, 2023 (archived link).
Overlaid Sinhala-language text reads, "A water pipe burst, causing a daughter and father to face a horrific accident revealed by CCTV".
According to the video report, a man and his daughter were rescued after they fell into a 16-foot-deep water-filled pit while riding a motorcycle in the Gothatuwa area of Colombo.
The longer footage shows the pair being lifted out of the hole by bystanders.
Image
Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the News First Facebook video (right)
The footage was also shared by local Sri Lankan news outlet Lankadeepa on YouTube, and was covered by The Sunday Times newspaper (archived here and here).
According to The Sunday Times report, the accident occurred in front of the Water Supply and Drainage Board office in Gothatuwa.
Elements of the video also correspond to Google Street View imagery of the area (archived link).
Image
Screenshot comparison of the accident footage (top) and Google Street View imagery of where it occurred (bottom), with corresponding elements highlighted by AFP
AFP previously debunked another false claims that spread during the monsoon season here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
AFP
19 hours ago
- AFP
AI-generated video falsely shared as aftermath of Iran's attack on Israel
"This footage is not recorded in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, or Syria, but in Tel Aviv, Israel, showing the destruction of some buildings in the city after an Iranian hypersonic missile attack," says the Indonesian-language caption of a video on X on June 15, 2025. Arabic-language text in the video's top-right corner reads, "Tel Aviv". The 16-second video shows toppled buildings and damaged structures. Image Screenshot of false post captured on June 19, 2025, with a red X added by AFP The longtime foes have continued to trade deadly fire in their most intense confrontation in history, fuelling fears of a drawn-out conflict that could engulf the Middle East (archived link). Iran's health ministry said at least 224 people have been killed and more than 1,200 wounded, while Israel's prime minister's office said at least 24 people have been killed and 592 others injured. The same video and claim have circulated on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. It has also been shared in other languages including Thai, English, Bengali, Arabic and Spanish. However, a reverse image search of the keyframes revealed the video was made using Google's AI tools. Image Screenshot from Google Images, with the AI label highlighted by AFP Another search found the clip was posted in an Instagram post on May 28, days before Iran's attack on Israel, alongside hashtags such as #southlebanon (archived link). The account has shared other AI-generated videos, and its profile reads "AI resistance". Image Screenshot of the 3amelyon's Instagram account, taken on June 20, 2025 AFP has debunked other misinformation related to the Israel-Iran conflict here.
AFP
a day ago
- AFP
Altered Trump video spreads amid Iran-Israel war
"We need to avoid getting involved in this conflict #trump #maga #israel #iran #middleeast #wwiii," says a June 15, 2025 post sharing the video on Instagram. The clip -- also shared to X, TikTok and YouTube -- claims to show Trump saying the United States should stay out of the conflict between the two arch enemies, which began when Israel targeted Iranian military bases and nuclear sites in a June 13 attack and has seen Iran respond with barrages of missiles and drones. "I think we should skip it," Trump appears to say in the video. "I don't know. I'm just not really feeling it. World War III folks, hard pass." Image Screenshot from Instagram taken June 20, 2025 Referencing nationwide protests against his agenda, Trump supposedly continued: "We've got enough going on stateside. We've got the 'No Kings' riots set to kick off this weekend. 'No Kings.' We like kings, actually, folks. We like one king in particular, quite frankly. The king of kings, our lord and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to draw elevated support from Trump, but the Republican US president said June 20 that Iran had a "maximum" of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could take a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier. He had spent weeks before the attack pursuing a diplomatic path towards a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018. The video purporting to show him saying the United States "should skip it," meanwhile, is altered. Reverse image searches reveal the footage was lifted from a May 28, 2025 event -- more than two weeks prior to Israel's strikes on Iran (archived here). Former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who was sworn in at the ceremony as the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, can be seen standing behind Trump throughout. The video and transcript show the president mentioned Israel's war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the US efforts to reach a deal with Iran, but he did not call for the United States to stay out of a conflict between the two Middle Eastern nations (archived here and here). He was asked at one point whether he warned Netanyahu against taking any action that could disrupt his talks with Iran, but he said he was pushing to follow the diplomatic path. The president made no mention of the "No Kings" protests. The manipulated video appears to lift footage from around the 18:36 mark of the May 28 footage, based on Trump's hand movements. In that moment, the president was talking about inflation. The voice cloning detection tool in the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found that the audio on the altered version is "very likely AI-generated." Some of the earliest posts sharing the clip included disclaimers saying it was a parody generated by artificial intelligence. AFP has debunked other misinformation about the Iran-Israel war here.
AFP
2 days ago
- AFP
Video shows a Russian pilgrimage, not Israelis evacuating over Iran strikes
Israel's attack on Iran on June 13, 2025, triggered retaliatory measures by Iran and turned the decades-long enmity between the two into a rapidly-spiralling military conflict. A video compilation circulating on Facebook in Ethiopia claims to show Israelis fleeing cities en masse following a warning from Iran. However, this is false: the video shows footage from the Velikoretsky religious pilgrimage in Russia, which took place earlier this month, as well as people setting off en masse to collect a medicinal fungus on a mountainside in Nepal. The text accompanying the video post in Amharic reads: 'Israelis leave cities due to Iran's warning to evacuate their cities.' Image Screenshot of the false post, taken on June 19, 2025 'Happy trip,' reads the English text overlay, accompanied by an emoji of the Israeli flag. The 29-second video is composed of three clips divided into two sections. In the top half of the screen, hundreds of people are seen walking in a hilly, dry landscape. In the bottom half of the screen, a crowd of people are shown walking down a street, all headed in the same direction and most of them wearing large backpacks. Then, a crowd is seen from above crossing a bridge. The video was published on June 17, 2025, and has been shared more than 190 times since. A similar post was also posted here on Facebook and shared more than 5,000 times. Israel-Iran conflict After decades of bad blood and a long shadow war, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign on 13 June 2025, to which Iran responded with a barrage of missiles and drones. AFP reported that as of June 19, 2025, more than 200 Iranians and Israelis were killed in the missile attacks on both sides, with hundreds more wounded (archived here). A hospital in southern Israel was hit when Iran fired a barrage of missiles, while the Israeli army said it had hit an "inactive nuclear reactor" in Arak, Iran. International media also reported that on June 15, 2025, Iranian forces warned Israelis to leave their country in the face of increasing rocket attacks (archived here). However, the video does not show Israelis fleeing their cities. Velikoretsky pilgrimage AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the video. For the footage of the crowd walking in the street and across a bridge, the search results include an X post from June 6, 2025 (archived here). Важное событие, о котором МОЛЧАТ практически все СМИ 22 тысячи православных русских людей идут Великорецким крестным ходом. Идут во славу Христа, Богородицы и Николая Угодника 22 тыс человек оставили дела и работу, чтобы несколько дней молиться Господу о прощении грехов — olga_1205 (@k_ollga) June 6, 2025 Text in Russian accompanying the video indicates that it shows thousands of Russians who took part in the Velikoretsky religious pilgrimage earlier this month. The Velikoretsky is a Russian Orthodox procession that takes place in early June every year, covering 110 miles (177 kilometres) and passing through 12 locations in the Kirov region (archived here). The official website for the city of Kirov featured a story about the pilgrimage held earlier this month on June 3, 2025, which includes a picture corresponding to the footage (archived here). Image Screenshots of the image from Kirov's website (left) and the false post, taken on June 18, 2025 Meanwhile, search results for the clip of people walking in the hills established that it was originally posted on Telegram on June 2, 2025, more than a week before the start of the Israeli-Iranian conflict. The clip shows a crowd of people in search of a medical fungus known as Yarsagumba around Mount Dolpa in western Nepal. Every year, people head to the highlands of Dolpa to harvest Yarsagumba, a rare and highly valued medicinal fungus (archived here). Neither of the three clips is related to Israel or the ongoing conflict with Iran.
