On the night of 08 January 2025, a stampede occurred near the Vishnu Nivasam in Tirupati, where the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) had set up counters to distribute tokens for the annual Vaikunta Dwara Darshanam, a highly anticipated festival beginning on 10 January 2025 (here, here). According to reports (here, here, and here), at least six devotees lost their lives, and many others were injured in the stampede. Amid this, a heart-wrenching video (here, here, and here) showing a man carrying the dead body of a boy on a motorcycle, instead of in an ambulance, is going viral on social media with claims linking it to the recent Tirupati stampede. Through this article, let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a man carrying his son’s dead body on a motorcycle in Tirupati, following the stampede that occurred on the night of 08 January 2025.
Fact: This viral video is not connected to the recent Tirupati stampede that occurred on the night of 08 January 2025. The video dates back to 26 April 2022 and shows visuals of a man carrying his son’s dead body on a motorcycle outside the Sri Venkateswara Ramnarayan (SVR) Ruia Government General Hospital in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. The incident occurred after the private ambulance allegedly demanded a heavy price for transporting the body and prevented other ambulances from entering the hospital. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To gather more details about the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search which led us to a video uploaded on the ‘OneIndia News’ YouTube channel on 27 April 2024, titled: Tirupati man forced to carry son’s body on shoulders for 90 km to reach home. The video description stated that in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati town, a man named Narshimulu was forced to carry the dead body of his 10-year-old son on his shoulders while riding pillion on a motorcycle for 90 km to reach his home. He had to resort to this after ambulance drivers at a government hospital in Tirupati allegedly demanded ₹10,000 to transport the body.
To gather more information about this incident, we conducted a relevant keyword search and found multiple news reports (here, here, and here) published in April 2022, featuring keyframes from the viral video clip. According to these reports, the incident occurred at the Sri Venkateswara Ramnarayan (SVR) Ruia Government General Hospital in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, in the early hours of 26 April 2022. A 10-year-old boy named Jeseva, from Chitvel in the neighbouring Annamayya District, had been admitted to the SVR Ruia Government General Hospital a few days earlier for the treatment of kidney and liver ailments. He passed away in the late hours of 25 April 2022. The boy’s father tried to arrange an ambulance to shift his son’s body to their native village. But, the ambulance drivers allegedly demanded a hefty sum. Unable to afford the cost, he contacted his relatives back home, who arranged an ambulance from outside the hospital. But the private ambulance operators at the Government hospital, who had formed a syndicate, stopped the other ambulance from entering the hospital and chased it away. As a result, the helpless father was left with no choice but to carry his son’s body while riding pillion on a relative’s two-wheeler.
Additionally, we also found a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the Andhra Pradesh Police, responding to a viral post that shared the same video, linking it to the recent Tirupati stampede. The Andhra Pradesh Police clarified (archived link) that the video is from an incident that occurred in Tirupati in 2022 and is not related to the Tirupati stampede, which took place on 08 January 2025. Similarly, the official fact-checking unit of the Andhra Pradesh government also issued a clarification (archived link) regarding this video shared in connection with the Tirupati stampede.
To sum it up, this viral video dates back to April 2022 and is not related to the recent Tirupati stampede that occurred on the night of 08 January 2025.
