A collage of three photographs showing an underwater road and railway track, a cut-out portion of a tunnel, and a picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have gone viral with a claim that it shows "India’s first underground road-cum-rail tunnel built across the Brahmaputra River in Assam."
However, we found that the claim was false.
One of the photographs showed a design image of the Fehmarn Belt, which is an under-construction underwater road and rail tunnel being built between Denmark and Germany in Europe.
The second image was a design image of a proposed floating tunnel being built in Norway.
CLAIM
A claim with the viral image said, "इसे कहते हैं नया भारत मोदी हैं तो मुमकिन है। भारत की पहली पानी के नीचे सड़क व रेलवे लाइन, यह असम में ब्रह्मपुत्र नदी के नीचे बनी लगभग 14 किलोमीटर लंबी सुरंग है।"
[Translation: This is the new India, it is possible because of Modi. This is about a 14 km long tunnel built under the Brahmaputra river in Assam, which is India's first underwater road and railway line.]
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We conducted a reverse image search of the three images on Google and found that the claim was not true.
IMAGE 1
We found the first photograph in an article published on GPS World, an American Magazine covering the global positioning industry in March 2020.
According to the story, the image showed the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link, which is a planned underwater tunnel that would allow travellers to go by car or train between Germany and Denmark.
We also found the same image on the website of The Tunnel Engineering Consultants, a consultancy specialising in soft ground tunnel design and engineering, construction and project management.
The company was also involved in the construction of the Fehmarn Belt and published the viral image describing it as a design picture of the Fehmarn Belt.
IMAGE 2
We found the second image in an article published on Engineering News-Record in 2013, a publication that provides the engineering and construction news.
The article talked about a proposed floating tunnel being built in Norway.
The same image was also found in a 2016 article published on the World Economic Forum's website. The article, quoting Wired, states that the project would cost $25 billion to build. The article included the image and credited the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) for the same.
The final image of PM Modi was from 2017 when he was inaugurating the Dhola-Sadia Bridge, which is the country's longest river bridge connecting Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
We found news reports about a proposed road-cum-rail tunnel that was supposed to be built across the Brahmaputra river in Assam at an estimated cost of Rs 7,000 crore.
We found a tweet by the Director-General Border Roads (DGBR) where they talked about carrying out a recce of the site of rail and road highway.
However, we could not find any design photographs of the proposed project online.
Therefore, it is clear that design images of underwater tunnels from Europe were used to claim that it showed an underwater rail cum roadway tunnel built under Brahmaputra.
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