A video of a snow mishap in Sikkim is falsely shared as that of Amarnath Yatris under snow. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 2, 2023
A social media post accompanied by a video in which one can see people stuck under snow getting help is being shared on social media. The post claims this occurred during the holy Amarnath Yatra, where hundreds of people were stuck under an avalanche of snow. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of people trapped under an avalanche in Amaranth.
Fact: The incident shown in the video occurred in Sikkim’s Nathula pass Area. Hence the claim made in the post is False.
To learn more details about the claim, we performed a basic keyword search on the internet about any avalanche that occurred in Amarnath recently. However, this search did not yield any relevant information.
Then, we searched the internet with relevant keywords looking for the recent avalanche accidents in India and learnt that an avalanche accident occurred in Sikkim’s Nathula pass on 4 April 2023. Hindustan Times reported that seven tourists lost their lives on that day. A few more news reports on this incident can be found here and here.
A YouTube channel named PM Gurung Vlogs, which contains vlogs on tourist places of Sikkim, uploaded a video titled ‘Now update heavy snowfall Changu Lake Road Block’ on 4 April 2023. In this video, the vlogger can be seen showing us the area hit by the avalanche. He also shows us the ongoing rescue operations in the same video. You can see the visuals of the viral video in this vlog from 3:15 seconds.
Video reports on this avalanche incident by ANI and NDTV contain visuals that match the location shown in this vlog. With this, we can conclude that the visuals shown in the Viral video belong to the avalanche accident in Sikkim on 4 April 2023, not in Amarnath. You can see the comparison below.
To sum up, a video of a snow mishap filmed in Sikkim is falsely shared as that of Amarnath Yatris stuck under snow.