Fact Check: Video of young men walking in deep waters in Chennai is not a recent incident
Chennai and its surrounding districts witnessed heavy rains for the past few days. The incessant rainfall crippled
Sathyabhama Engineering College
Chennai and its surrounding districts witnessed heavy rains for the past few days. The incessant rainfall crippled day-to-day life. The heavy rainfall led to traffic snarls, paralysed public transportation services, and forced the cancellation of domestic flights. But many areas of the city recovered within a day, because of the efforts of the concerned authorities and also because the rains stopped earlier than expected.
Though there was heavy rain battering the city, it did not turn into a storm as everyone was expecting. However, isolated heavy rainfall is set to continue in a few interior areas of Tamil Nadu. While many places experienced moderate rainfall, the cyclone intensifying in the Bay of Bengal did not impact Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile, as the rains started lashing out Chennai and Tamil Nadu, a few old videos started circulating on social media with false claims. One such video showing young men walking out in deep water carrying their luggage on wooden logs is shared on social media with the claim that it shows the present situation in Satyabhama Engineering College, Chennai.
YouTube channels of Telugu mainstream media channels like V6 also shared the same video.
Fact check:
The claim is Misleading. The video is an old one from the year 2023.
Telugupost extracted keyframes from the video and used them to search using Google reverse image search. The search led us to a YouTube video, published on December 15, 2023, with the title ‘@satyabhama flood 2023… Chennai@michaung’. It was published by a YouTube channel named Muskan Singh Vlogs.
It shows young boys swimming in the flood water along with their luggage.
Upon further search, we found the longer version of the viral video was shared on the Instagram account called sathyabhamites, with the caption ‘We survived it’. It was published on December 6, 2023. The Instagram account belonged to video creators @ Sathyabhama University. The video shows the campus of Satyabhama Engineering College which was flooded during Cyclone Michaung in 2023.
We can see similar videos shared by another YouTube video on the channel named Ashok Reddy Vlogs.
The article published on a website named News.career360.com states heavy rainfall brought
Noticing their situation, the residents of the area helped them with the necessary supplies and arranged for them to be sent to the closest bus stops. Hence, the viral video is not recent, it is from the year 2023. The claim is Misleading.