Fact Check: Viral video of a leopard sitting beside the highway makes a Misleading claim
A video of a leopard sitting beside the footpath on a highway is going viral on social media, especially on YouTube, with a narrative in Telugu claiming that it was spotted on the Bangalore- Bellari highway in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh.
A video of a leopard sitting beside the footpath on a highway is going viral on social media, especially on YouTube, with a narrative in Telugu claiming that it was spotted on the Bangalore- Bellari highway in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh.
The claim goes as “అనంతపురం జిల్లా. 'అనంత'లో హైవేపై బైఠాయించిన చిరుత.. హడలెత్తిపోతున్న వాహనదారులు. రాయదుర్గం నియోజకవర్గం, డీ.హీరేహాళ్ మండలం, ఓబులాపురం గ్రామం బెంగళూరు-బళ్లారి హైవే చెక్ పోస్ట్్ప మంగళవారం రాత్రి ఓ చిరుతపులి నడిరోడ్డపై సంచరిస్తూ అక్కడే బైఠాయించింది. సుమారు రెండు గంటలపాటు ఆ పరిసరాల్లోనే తిరుగుతూ కనిపించింది. దీంతో వాహనదారులు భయాందోళనకు గురయ్యారు.”
When translated, it reads: “Anantapur District. In 'Anantapur district, a leopard was spotted on the highway. The motorists riding on the highway were panicked. In Rayadurgam constituency, D. Heerehal mandal, Obulapuram village, Bengaluru-Bellari highway check post, a leopard was found wandering on the road on Tuesday night. It wandered in the area for about two hours. Due to this, motorists panicked”
The claim is viral on YouTube and WhatsApp.
Fact Check:
The claim that the leopard was spotted on Bangalore- Bellari highway in Anantapur district is misleading. The leopard was spotted on Gadag Binkadakatti road in the Gadag district of Karnataka.
When the keyframes extracted from the video were used to perform Google reverse image search, we found a few articles which published the viral video.
A YouTube channel, named Newsfirst Kannada, shared the same video with the title in Kannada “ಗದಗದ ಹೈವೇಲಿ ಮಲಗಿದ ಚಿರತೆ”, which when translated states ‘Sleeping Leopard on Gadagada Highway’.
The same video was shared on Twitter with the caption -- Leopard sighted on #Gadag #Binkadakatti Road, NH 67, on Sunday. night @NewIndianXpress @
News 18 Kannada also shared the video with the caption: “A leopard has been spotted near Binkadakatti in Gadag. A leopard was seen on the Gadag-Hubli road and the passengers captured the scene of the leopard on their mobile phones.”
An article published by the Indian Express states that in the 57-second video, a leopard is seen sitting on the roadside while vehicles are passing around it. Since the leopard did not charge at the vehicles, it was believed that the wild animal might have been injured in an accident.
The forest officials refuted the claim that the leopard ran away from the zoo in Gadag and confirmed that it is a wild animal and returned back to the forest. They believed that the animal was in a state of shock and was not injured.
Hence, the claim that the video was showing a leopard resting on the highway is from the Bangalore-Bellari highway in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh, is misleading. The leopard was sighted in the Gadag district in Karnataka.