Digitally morphed videos shared as mobile handset blast on answering call from 777888999 - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 10, 2021
A social media post accompanying a video that shows a mobile phone exploding upon answering a call from a number ‘777888999’ is being widely shared. The video also shows a person who had badly injured his mouth, alluding to the mobile blast as the cause of his injury. We also received a query on our WhatsApp tip line enquiring about the authenticity of the same video. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video showing blast of a mobile handset upon answering a call from ‘777888999’.
Fact: The video shows a 9 digit mobile number whereas Indian mobile numbers follow a 10 digit series. This proves that the mobile number is not valid. Earlier ABP news reported the video as a hoax. As far as the visuals of the person with mutilated face are concerned, the visuals are actually related to an incident where a person tried to kill himself by placing explosives in his mouth. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The video shows a 9 digit mobile number. However,  Indian mobile numbers follow a 10 digit series. Even if we assume that the mobile number belongs to a foreign country, there should be a country code displayed before the number, which is not the case as per the video and this proves that the mobile number is not valid.
Google search with relevant keywords yielded us an ABP news report, which reported the same news back in 2017. The report rated the news as a hoax and requested the public to not share such baseless news. However, the news report did not feature any visuals of the person who injured his mouth, as shown in the viral video.
Further reverse image search of the screenshots of the injured person led us to a 2016 Brazilian fact-check story that reported the same visuals. As per this article, the visuals of a person with a mutilated face are real, and the reason for the injury is that the person tried to blow up his mouth by placing explosives in his mouth. However, some of the sources provided in the article are no longer accessible though their archived versions are available. Hence, could not independently verify the same. Another article that reiterated the same can be read here. All these pieces of evidence establish that the viral video is digitally created using a couple of unrelated old videos.
To sum it up, digitally morphed videos show a blast of mobile handset upon answering a call from 777888999.