A video showing two shockingly overcrowded trains, one passing under a bridge and the other over it, has gone viral on social media with claims that it is from India. The trains were visibly heavily packed, with people sitting on roofs, clinging to doors, and occupying every inch of space.
While sharing the video, one Facebook user wrote, “Safety is illegal in India.”
India Today Fact Check found that the viral video is from Bangladesh.
OUR PROBE
A reverse image search on keyframes from the viral video led us to several news reports from April 2024. An NDTV report from April 14 noted that the video shows two overcrowded trains in Bangladesh during Eid festivities.
Similar media reports confirming that the video is indeed from Bangladesh can be found here and here.
We noticed that one train was dark green and the other was blue, with two white stripes running horizontally along the carriages. The text on the trains appeared to be in Bangla but was largely unclear due to the poor video quality.
We found images of similar-looking trains labelled as Bangladeshi on stock image sites such as Alamy and Shutterstock. One such photo of the green train on Alamy was captioned: “Dhaka, Bangladesh. 09th Aug, 2019. People climb up a train at a railway station ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on Aug. 9, 2019. With the Eid al-Adha holiday approaching, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi capital dwellers streamed out of the city to join the festival with their kith and kin in village homes. Credit: Xinhua/Alamy Live News.”
We also found images of trains running over the bridge from the viral video on Alamy. These photos were also labelled as being from Bangladesh. Comparisons between screenshots from the viral video and these stock images can be seen below.
Several media reports also contained similar photos of overwhelmingly overcrowded trains, highlighting massive crowds that travel during Eid. Thousands of people pack into these trains each year, hoping to return to their hometowns to celebrate the festival with their families.
It’s worth noting that there are similar photos and videos of overcrowded Indian trains. This particular footage, however, is not from India.
Source Agencies
