A video attached to a tweet by Anand Mahindra is being widely shared on social media claiming that the tigers were sighted on the Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar road. The viral tweet, through the video, even claims that the tigers were sighted on 19 August 2021. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of tigers sighted on Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar road on 19 August 2021.
Fact: The video was taken by a twitter user named ‘Sarang Ghormare’ when he went on a night safari in ‘Tadoba’ on 03 November 2019. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
One of the Twitter users named ‘Sarang Ghormare’ replied to Anand Mahindra’s tweet claiming that the video was taken by him when he went on a night safari in ‘Tadoba’ on 03 November 2019. The user posted both the original Facebook and YouTube links with the same video.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, a similar but shorter (58 second) video was found published on Twitter by ‘Susanta Nanda IFS’. Susanta Nanda is an Indian Forest Service officer of the 1989 Odisha cadre. He tweeted that this video was from somewhere in western India and that it was shared by a colleague. So, this video is not taken on 19 August 2021 as it was circulating online since 2019.
In Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve, tigers are regularly sighted on the roads (here and here). According to an article, owing to regular tiger sightings even in the Buffer area of the reserve, tourism boomed in the region.
To sum it up, an old video from Tadoba is falsely shared as a recent sighting of tigers from Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar road.
