Bodies Found in Container in TN? No, It’s From Pak’s 2015 Heatwave

The images are from Pakistan’s heatwave from 2015 which killed thousands of people.

(Photo: The Quint)

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CLAIM

A video, circulating on social media, claims that the Tamil Nadu police has found dead bodies of children from a container and that these bodies were missing organs.

The Quint received the video on WhatsApp from a reader asking for its authenticity to be verified.

The one-minute three-second video is a compilation of multiple images and has a message written in Gujarati which loosely translates to “Take care of your children and contact the police if something like this happens”.

Screenshot of the video received by The Quint.(Photo: Screenshot taken by The Quint)

WHAT WE FOUND

The claims made in the video are false. The images in the story are of the deaths caused by a heatwave in Pakistan's Karachi in 2015. The same images were circulated earlier as well right after the Balakot airstrikes with different false claims.

FACT

PICTURE 1

(Photo: Screenshot/Video received by The Quint)

(Photo: Screenshot/Video received by The Quint)

(Photo: Screenshot/Video received by The Quint)

On conducting a Google reverse image search, The Quint found the picture was used by The Guardian in their reportage of the Pakistan heatwave.

Photo story carried by The Guardian on the Pakistan’s 2015 Heatwave.(Photo: Screenshot/TheGuardian)

Over 1,200 people died of heat-related illnesses in Pakistan's Karachi during a heatwave in 2015, Al Jazeera reported.

(Photo: Screenshot/Video received by The Quint)

In the photo, one can see EDHI written on the t-shirts of the people handling the bodies. EDHI foundation is a non-profit social welfare programme in Pakistan with its headquarters in Karachi, hence the video cannot be from Tamil Nadu.

This picture too shows the bodies of heatwave victims in Karachi.

Screenshot of the image hosted on Getty images. (Photo Courtesy: Getty Images/Screenshot)

PICTURE 2

(Photo: Screenshot/Video received by The Quint)

The image of the burial of the bodies was carried by The New York Times in its report of the incident.

(Photo: Screenshot/New York Times)

The same images were uploaded on Getty images under the Pakistan heatwave 2015 crisis.

PICTURE 3

(Photo: Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

The Quint is yet to ascertain the source of this video and this story will be updated as and when we do.

SAME PICTURES, DIFFERENT CLAIM

The Quint had earlier debunked the same images which had gone viral claiming to be from the site of the air strike.

The set of pictures were being circulated on messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

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