An 8-year-old boy was recently attacked by a stray dog in Kalyan West, Maharashtra, while returning from classes, suffering bites on his genitals and face. This marks the second dog attack within three days in the KDMC jurisdiction. Meanwhile, a video (here, here and here) circulating on social media shows dogs attacking children in a park. This is being shared with claims that the video shows the incident in Kalyan, Maharashtra. Let’s investigate the truth behind this video.
Claim: The video of a dog attacking children is from Kalyan, Maharashtra.
Fact: The viral video is from São Paulo, Brazil, where on 12 November 2024, two pit bulls attacked a 12-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy in a park located on Rua Roberto Caetano Maria Lenci in São Paulo’s North Zone, Brazil. Though a similar incident occurred in Kalyan, the viral video has nothing to do with Maharashtra. Hence, the claim is MISLEADING.
To uncover the truth behind this video, we conducted a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the video of the same incident from another angle uploaded on X on 14 November 2024, by Perrenguematogrosso, a Brazilian social media influencer. The video was captioned in Portuguese, which translates to “Children seriously injured after attack by two pitbulls.”
We searched with the Portuguese caption, which led us to the same video on YouTube uploaded by a large media network channel from Brazil, called Jovem Pan News, on 14 November 2024. The video had the same Portuguese caption. In the description of the video, they provided details of the incident, which translated to: “A 12-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy were seriously injured in a Pitbull attack on 12 November at a playground in São Paulo’s North Zone, Brazil. Both sustained ‘lacerating injuries’ and were hospitalized.” This confirms that the incident occurred in Brazil, not India.
Further keyword searches led to several Brazilian media reports (here, here and here) confirming that on 12 November, two pit bulls attacked a 12-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy in a park located on Rua Roberto Caetano Maria Lenci in São Paulo’s North Zone. The attack occurred around 4 p.m. when the dogs, which had escaped from a nearby property, jumped over a wall and attacked the children while they were playing.
Meanwhile, in Kalyan, Maharashtra, an 8-year-old boy named Arthav Shrinivas was attacked on 7 December 2024 by a stray dog while returning home from class. The dog bit him on his genitals and face until passersby intervened. Arthav was hospitalised at KDMC’s Rukaminibai Hospital and discharged the next day (here and here). This incident follows a fatal dog attack on a woman in Titwala just days earlier (here and here). However, the viral video is not related to these incidents.
To sum up, a video of a dog attack on children in Brazil is shared as a recent dog attack from Maharashtra.
