A video (here, here and here) showing an allegedly drunk man fearlessly petting a tiger in the middle of a road is going viral on social media. The clip is being shared with the claim that the incident took place in Madhya Pradesh’s Pench area, known for its tiger reserve, and that the man, identified as Raju Patel, mistook the tiger for a cat while under the influence of liquor. The accompanying caption claims he even tried to make the tiger drink alcohol before walking away unharmed. Let’s find the truth behind this claim.
Claim: The viral video shows a drunk man petting a tiger on a road in Madhya Pradesh’s Pench area.
Fact: The video is AI-generated and not real. The Deputy Director of Pench Tiger Reserve confirmed that no such incident occurred, and an AI detection tool (Hive) found the video to be 99.9% likely AI-generated. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To find the truth, we conducted a keyword search on Google to check if any such incident had occurred in the Pench area of Madhya Pradesh, but it yielded no results. During the search, we came across a report by Bhaskar English stating that the video is fake, as confirmed by the Pench Tiger Reserve authorities.
For further verification, Factly contacted Rajneesh Kumar Singh, the Deputy Director of Pench Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, who confirmed that the video is fake and clarified that no such incident involving a tiger has occurred recently.
To further verify the video, we examined the viral post and found several users commenting that the clip appeared to be AI-generated. Using this clue, we analysed the video with the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated a 99.9% likelihood of it being AI-generated, strongly suggesting that the viral clip is not real but artificially created.
To sum up, this video showing a drunk man petting a tiger in Madhya Pradesh’s Pench area is AI-generated and does not show a real incident.
