Claim: Viral video shows Karachi residents catching a crocodile that escaped Manghopir Shrine due to urban flooding.
Fact: This video is from August 2019, and was filmed in Vadodara, India
A video clip that shows a crocodile being caught in flooded streets was posted to Facebook and shared on WhatsApp after heavy monsoon rainfall caused urban flooding in Karachi.
PremierTv, a Facebook page with 2,553 page likes, posted the video with a caption that translates to “Outside a crocodile compound in Manghopir, people are trying to catch a crocodile by themselves but one should beware, such an activity can be dangerous.” The video has already been shared by 3.2k users, six hours after it was posted.
Soch Fact Check took screenshots of different frames of the video and ran them through a reverse image search. We found that the video was actually taken in Vadodara after floods hit India’s Gujarat in August 2019.
Interestingly, the same video that is now being shared in Pakistan, went viral in India in September 2019 as social media users claimed it was taken in Patna.
Multiple fact checkers in India, including Boom Live and OpIndia also traced the video to August 2019 and determined the incident took place in Gujarat’s Vadodara. The same incident, filmed from a different angle, can be seen in this Times of India post uploaded on August 3, 2019.
Summary: A video going viral on Facebook showing a crocodile that escaped from Manghopir shrine in Karachi is actually from India.
Research Associates: Areeba Tariq, Ammar Zardari, Rahul Hasnain