The city of Hyderabad received a huge amount of rainfall on 13 October 2020 (with some areas receiving more than 20 cm rainfall). A lot of videos and photos are being shared on the internet claiming those to be of Hyderabad. While some of them show the actual visuals, the others are just picked up from other places and shared as recent and related to Hyderabad. A video is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows rainwater at Shamshabad Airport [i.e. Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA)] in Hyderabad. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video shows the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (Shamshabad, Hyderabad) flooded with rainwater.
Fact: It is an old 2017 video from Mexico. The video shows the Mexico City International Airport flooded with rainwater, not the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport- Hyderabad. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the screenshots of the video were run through Google Reverse Image Search, many similar videos were found in the search results. It was found that the video is on the internet at least since August 2017. Several media outlets have reported that the video is related to Mexico City International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional Benito Juárez). Those posts can be found here and here. Also, in one of the frames in the video, the flag colors of Mexico can be seen.
The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (Hyderabad) authorities have also clarified on their official Twitter account that the viral video ‘does not belong to RGI Airport’.
Previously, the same video went with viral as flood video of airports in multiple cities (Singapore, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Miami, etc.) and has been fact-checked by multiple media agencies across the globe. Some of those articles can be found here, here and here.
To sum it up, an old unrelated video is being falsely shared as the Hyderabad Airport (RGIA) flooded with rainwater. The video is actually from Mexico.
