Fact Check: Video showing adulteration of mangoes injecting chemical is scripted for awareness purpose
Adulteration of fruits and vegetables poses a significant threat to public health in India. The adulteration of fruits and vegetables includes various deceptive practices like artificial colors, chemical preservatives, pesticide residues, etc.
mangoes
Adulteration of fruits and vegetables poses a significant threat to public health in India. The adulteration of fruits and vegetables includes various deceptive practices like artificial colors, chemical preservatives, pesticide residues, etc. Summer is mango season for Indians, and eating ripe mangoes is common. It also is common among mango producers to ripen them artificially to meet the demand.
Amidst the seasonal rush for mangoes, a video was shared claiming that the person seen in the video was caught ripening the mangoes artificially using chemical injections. He is seen injecting the mangoes with yellow liquid. A facebook user shared this video with the caption in Telugu “మామిడి పండ్లలో కూడా కల్తీ ఇలా చేస్తారట”. The translation claims that this is how mangoes are adulterated.
Fact Check:
The claim is Misleading. The video is a scripted one.
When we observed the video shared on Facebook, we found a disclaimer flash on the screen stating “Disclaimer: This video is a complete fiction all the events in the videos are scripted and made for awareness purposes only. This does not promote any kind of activity or defame any kind of ritual. Any similarity to the living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.”
Upon further search of the keyframes extracted from the video, we found that the original video was shared on a YouTube channel named ‘The Social Media Junction’. This video was posted on June 20, 2024, with a caption in Hindi, stating ‘Injecting chemicals into mangoes’.
A similar video of the adulteration of mangoes was also published on this YouTube channel, where a different man is seen adding chemicals to mangoes and caught by police. Though the person seen in the video is different, the background and idea are the same. In this video, we can see the person adding liquid color to the mangoes and a police official questioning him about it.
We also compared the screenshots from the viral video with screenshots from other videos published, we found that the person seen in the viral video is seen in many other videos, confirming that this YouTube channel publishes scripted videos with people enacting various roles. Here is the screenshot comparison.
The About Us page of the channel states that they create videos for entertainment and also social experiments. Therefore, the video in circulation is a scripted one, the claim is Misleading.