A video (here and here) has recently gone viral on social media in which a man appears suddenly on a busy road lying down between the front tyres of a public transport bus; he later gets up as the bus passes over him. Netizens are sharing that this incident allegedly occurred on Yusufguda’s main road in Hyderabad, Telangana and it is claimed that this man did this while shooting a reel. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: A video of a real incident of a man lying between the front tyres of a public transport bus while shooting a reel at Yousufguda main road in Hyderabad, Telangana.
Fact: This is a video made using VFX. The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TGSRTC) MD, VC Sajjanar gave a clarification on this video, saying that this video is not of a real incident; and that it’s an ‘edited video’. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
After taking a closer look at this viral video, we observed many strange anomalies in a few of its frames. Based on these, we concluded that this is an ‘edited video.’
Firstly, the shadow of the person running down the road is invisible in many places. The collage below shows you those differences.
Secondly, when the person in this video walks off the road after the bus runs over him; suddenly, some road marking lines appear under his feet, then disappear again after a while. This is an editing error.
Also, TGSRTC Managing Director VC Sajjanar clarified through his official ‘X’ handle that this video is fake and completely ‘edited.’ Calling it out fake and issuing a warning against people making such videos for social media traction, he said, “… there is a danger of others imitating this kind of unintended actions for likes and comments. Edited videos that are made for fun can also cause harm to others. #TGSRTC management is taking such incidents seriously. Legal action will be taken against those responsible,” Sajjanar tweeted on 21 June 2024.
To find out the origin of the viral video, some of the key frames of the video were used to reverse image search through which we found the same video on an Instagram account named @creative_saii. On this page, they upload tutorials related to video editing skills. This now-deleted video was uploaded by them on 16 June 2024. We reached out to them for details on who made this video and how it was created. This article will be updated as soon as they respond.
To sum up, an edited video of a stunt in which a man lays down in the gap between the front tyres of a bus going over the road to shoot a reel is being falsely shared as a real incident.