Video from China Falsely Shared as Pawna Dam Near Pune

Social media users falsely claimed that the video is from Pawna dam near Pune.

A video on social media falsely claimed that it was from Pawna dam near Pune.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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CLAIM

The Met department predicted heavy to very heavy showers at isolated places in the hilly areas in Pune, Kolhapur and Satara districts of Maharashtra on Wednesday, 14 August. Amid the rainfall that parts of Maharashtra have been receiving, a video on social media claims that water released from Pawna dam in Maval Taluka is flooding parts of Pune.

TRUE OR FALSE?

The video is not from Pawna dam near Pune, but from Xiaolangdi dam in China.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We did a frame-to-frame analysis using InVID, a video verification tool, and then reverse-searched each frame on Yandex. This led us to a tweet published on 23 May.

Yandex reverse search led us to a tweet that suggested that the video is from China.(Photo: Yandex screenshot)

The tweet hinted that the video is from China. Consequently, we ran a YouTube search using keywords ‘yellow river china,’ and found that the same video was uploaded in May with the caption ‘The power of China's Yellow River at Xiaolangdi Dam.’

We also searched YouTube using the keywords ‘China Yellow River Xiaolangdi Dam,’ and found that the same video was uploaded in November 2018 as well. The clipped video that is being claimed to be from Pawna dam is a part of the longer video and can be seen from 0:01 seconds to 0:14 seconds.

We also found a video tweeted by Xinhua Culture & Travel’s official Twitter handle of Xiaolangdi dam in China. Further, we compared the structure of the dam shown in the YouTube video and the one that was shared on Twitter. The identical parts of the dam have been highlighted in red.

Left: YouTube video. Right: Twitter video.(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

We also found a video of Pawna dam uploaded by Loksatta on their official YouTube channel on 4 August with the caption ‘Pune: Water was released from Pawna dam in Maval taluka.’ The structure of the dam shown in the video is completely different to the one shared by social media users.

A still from Pawna dam’s video uploaded by Loksatta.(Photo: YouTube screenshot)

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