An old and unrelated video from Bihar is falsely shared that of a stampede at the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela
A video (here, here, and here) going viral on social media claims to show a stampede situation that allegedly occurred at the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, currently taking place in Prayagraj. Users are sharing the video, claiming that the stampede took place at Ganga Ghat. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Video of a stampede at Prayagraj during the ongoing 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela.
Fact: This is an old video from August 2024 that shows a stampede that broke out in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a keyword search and found various news reports (here, here, and here) on the incident seen in the video. These news reports were from August 2024.
We also found an Instagram post from 4 September 2024 that shared the same video. It was posted by journalist Surendra Saini.
As per the news reports, a stampede incident happened in Bihar’s Bhagalpur during the occasion of Sawan. Devotees who visited a place called Ganga Ghat to take a holy dip in river Ganga faced a stampede situation when the crowd became uncontrollable.
“Actually, on the fourth Monday of Sawan in Bhagalpur, the crowd suddenly became uncontrollable at SM College Ghat due to which the barricading in the Ganga broke and many devotees reached the deep water. After this, many people started drowning in Ganga,” Aaj Tak reported. SDRF staff saved all the people from drowning. This evidence contradicts the viral claim that the video shows a stampede that happened recently during the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela.
To sum up, an old video from August 2024 is falsely shared as that of a stampede at the 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela.