We received a video on our WhatsApp tip line number (+91 9247052470) that shows a tragic incident of railing collapse which led to people falling onto the floor amidst pushing & shoving among a large crowd of people on a narrow walkway. The video was being circulated with a claim that the incident happened at a COVID-19 vaccine centre in Bandra, Mumbai (Maharashtra). A screenshot from the video can be viewed below. Through this article let’s fact-check the veracity of the claim.
Claim: Video of railing collapse at a COVID-19 vaccine centre in Bandra, Maharashtra.
Fact: The incident actually took place Bolivia, when a large group of students tried to enter a lecture hall. A railing collapsed amidst this rush which led to students falling off from the fourth floor. The video has nothing do with a vaccine centre in Maharashtra. Also, no such incident is reported from Maharashtra or for that matter from India. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Simple Google search with the keywords ‘students railing collapse’ yielded multiple news articles and videos which reported the same video. According to one such report dated 03 March 2021 by New York Post, the video actually shows an incident of a college balcony railing collapse that killed seven college students in Bolivia. As reported in the article, the tragedy happened in the El Alto university’s financial sciences building, when a large group of students attempted to enter a lecture hall for an assembly.
Even the Independent reported the video as an incident of a railing collapse that took place in Bolivia’s El Alto university when a large crowd of students tried to enter a lecture hall.
Also, if an incident of such a grave nature took place in India, the entire media would have reported it. But we could not find any news reports of a railing collapse at a vaccine centre in Bandra, Maharashtra. All these establish the fact that the video is indeed from Bolivia and has nothing to do with a vaccine centre in Bandra.
To sum it up, video of a railing collapse in Bolivia is passed off as from a COVID-19 vaccine centre in Bandra.
