Unrelated old videos shared as recent visuals of Muslims and anti-Modi groups vandalizing railway tracks and trains - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
June 7, 2023
In the context of the recent tragic train accident that took place near Bahanaga Bazar Railway Station in Odisha, multiple videos are being shared on social media claiming that they show recent visuals of Muslims and anti-Modi groups vandalizing railway tracks, throwing cylinders and pelting stones on moving trains aftermath of the Odisha train accident. Those posts can be seen here, here, and here. Let’s verify the claims made in the post.
Claim: Recent videos show Muslims and anti-Modi groups vandalizing railway tracks, throwing cylinders and pelting stones on moving trains aftermath of the Odisha tragic train accident.
Fact: All three videos shared in these posts are old. The first video shows protestors vandalizing a railway track in Bharatpur during the agitation against the government’s Agnipath scheme in June 2022. Regarding the video of a cylinder thrown on a moving train, the Northeastern Railway Protection Force published a tweet clarifying that the incident took place in July 2022 and mentioned the accused name as Ganguram. The third video was being shared on social media at least since 2019. Hence, the claims made in these posts are False.
Video 1:
The post claims it is the recent visuals of a few anti-Modi supporters vandalizing railway tracks in view of their political interests. On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a screengrab of the video was found in an article published by the OpIndia website on 19 June 2022. They reported it is the visuals of protestors vandalizing the railway track in Bharatpur during the agitation against the Agnipath scheme. Reporting the details of the incident, several other news websites have also published articles and videos in 2022. So, it is confirmed that the video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the recent tragic train accident in Odisha.
Video 2:
Sharing the video, the post claims that lately, a Muslim man threw a cylinder on a moving train in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani. When we searched for the sources using relevant keywords on the internet, we found an article recently published by the ‘ETV Bharat’ about the incident. ‘ETV Bharat’ reported that the video shows a one-year-old incident that took place in Haldwani, Uttarakhand.  Lately, the Northeastern Railway Protection Force published a tweet and clarified that the incident took place in July 2022, and mentioned the accused as one Ganguram. The perpetrator of the incident is not a Muslim.
श्रीमान उक्त वीडियो के सम्बन्ध में रेसुब चैकी हल्द्वानी के उनि0 के द्वारा बताया गया कि उक्त वीडियो दिनांक-05.07.22 (पुराना वीडियो है) जिसमें मुअसं-131/22 अंतर्गत धारा/174, 153 रेल अधिनियम सरकार बनाम गंगाराम के विरुद्ध मामला पंजीकृत किया जा चुका है।
Video 3:
Another video is being shared on social media claiming it is the recent visuals of Muslims pelting stones on a train. A few users claim it is the latest visuals from West Bengal. On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, the same video was found published by several users on social media at least since 2019. Those videos can be seen here, here, and here. A few users mentioned it is the visuals of a Muslim mob pelting stones on a train in Malda, West Bengal. Though we could not ascertain the exact location of the incident, it can be confirmed that the video shared in the post is old.
To sum it up, unrelated old videos are being shared now as recent visuals of Muslims and anti-Modi groups vandalizing railway tracks and trains aftermath of the Odisha train accident.