Fact Check: Video of high-rise building collapse is not related to HYDRAA demolition drive in Hyderabad
Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy decided to entrust more responsibilities to the disaster management department under the Greater Hyderabad limits. The department was renamed as Hyderabad Disaster Response and Assets Monitoring Protection (HYDRAA).
Claim :
High-rise building collapsed by HYDRAA in Kokapet, HyderabadFact :
The video is an old one and has no connection to recent demolitions by HYDRAA in Hyderabad
Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy decided to entrust more responsibilities to the disaster management department under the Greater Hyderabad limits. The department was renamed as Hyderabad Disaster Response and Assets Monitoring Protection (HYDRAA). HYDRAA was officially constituted in July 2024. It operates under the Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MAUD) department. Its main functions are to reclaim the illegally occupied government lands, protect Hyderabad’s water bodies, and serve as a safeguard against urban disasters. HYDRAA launched a detailed survey and started demolition of the unauthorized buildings that are encroaching on parks, water bodies, etc. Demolition drives were taken up near the Osman Sagar water body, near the lakes in Kukatpally, in Ameenpur, etc.
HYDRAA demolished villas and other residential buildings also. This received a backlash from the public and the residents claiming that they had not received adequate notice before the demolition. They argued that HYDRAA Commissioner A.V. Ranganath had previously assured them that houses in the buffer zone would not be demolished without proper notice. Intense protests erupted during these demolitions, with some of the residents even trying to attempt suicide.
Amidst all this, a video showing a collapse of a high-rise building is going viral with the claim that it shows the demolition of a high-rise building by HYDRAA in Kokapet, Hyderabad. In the video, we can see a tall building with more than 15 stories tilting to one side and collapsing on the floor.
Fact check:
The claim is False. The video is an old one and has no connection with the demolition drives of HYDRAA in Hyderabad city.
When we performed a reverse image search, we found that the video was online for a long time. The video was shared by an X user on September 4, 2024, with the caption “The construction of the "Aqua Garden" or "Avliga neighborhood" that blocked the flow of the Middle River has started to be demolished, but it will be a lesson to many corrupt people when they don't tear it down and throw it away.”
It was shared in a collage video with the caption “Excavator Destroying Anaconda Buildings” on September 11, 2024, by a YouTube channel named Tech Education Spot.
Another YouTube user named Knowledge TV, also shared a collage of the collapse of high-rise buildings with the title ‘कीतना रुपए का खर्स होता हैं औ
We found the viral video shared by a Facebook user named Sara Zaki, a year ago, on October 22, 2023, with the title that the video shows the bombing of a tower in Palestine by Israel. By this, we could understand that the video is an old one.
But when we searched for the reports on the bombing of the Palestine Tower in the Gaza Strip, we found that by October 28, 2023, the Israeli Air Force bombed residential buildings in the Jabalia refugee camp without any prior warning, killing an estimated 50 people per hour. On October 31, 2023, an airstrike on the Jabalia refugee camp was described as a "massive massacre".
The viral video was also used to create a funny video and published by a YouTube channel named RisovakaTV in November 2023.
Therefore, the viral video showing the collapse of high-rise building is not from Hyderabad and is not related to demolitions by HYDRAA. Though we were not able to confirm the location of the video, we were able to confirm that the video is not from Hyderabad and does not show the demolition of a high-rise building in Kokapet. The claim is False.
