Old video of a bus flooded with water is being attributed to the recent Bangalore floods - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
September 8, 2022
A video is being shared through a social media post in which a bus flooded with water can be seen. The post description in Kannada translates to ‘This is the situation in Bangalore.’ Let’s fact-check the claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of water entering a bus in Bangalore during the recent floods.
Fact: This video is old, and social media posts with this video have been in existence since June 2021. This vides is not related to the recent Bangalore floods. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We performed a reverse image search on Yandex with a few screenshots of the video and were led to an Instagram post. The post contained the same video from the viral post and was uploaded on 13 June 2021 by a user named ‘litmemesmumbai.’  This page uploads meme content related to Mumbai City.
A post shared by Lit Memes Mumbai (@litmemesmumbai)
We then searched the internet with relevant keywords and found similar posts on Facebook and Twitter that contained the same video. A Facebook page known as Mumbai l मुम्बई uploaded the video on 14 June 2021 with a post description that reads ‘Monsoon is Here ..Water Enters The Bus.’ While inspecting the video, we found the vehicle registration number plate inside the bus, and the number visible is ‘H-04..729’.
The vehicle registration code in India is in the format of AA 01 BB 1234. From the below image, we can understand how this code can be deciphered.
The number plate in the video has an invisible first character, two characters written after the two digits representing the Regional Transport Authority within the state; here, it is 04 and the first numeral in the unique four-digit number. Since the videos we found mention that this bus incident took place in Mumbai, Maharashtra, we looked for its state code and found that it is MH.  The state code of Karnataka is KA. Since the state code can only be two letters and the visible part of the number plate has H (possibly the second character of the state code) on it and not A, the location cannot be Karnataka (Bangalore). Chandigarh is the only other state with a state code with a second letter, H.
Although we cannot confirm the exact location of the incident, the above evidence indicates that the video could most likely be from Maharashtra. Apart from this, the video has been in circulation on social media since 2021, which means it is not related to the recent floods in Bangalore
To sum up, old video of a bus flooded with water is being attributed to the recent Bangalore floods.