Claim: A video shows passengers in a moving car that was inundated with water during the recent bout of heavy rainfall in Karachi.
Fact: The video is, in fact, not recent; it surfaced back in 2020 when a similar monsoon season lashed Karachi.
On 7 July 2022, Facebook page ‘Bilawal Zardari’ shared a video claiming to show passengers in a car filled with flood water from the heavy rainfall in Karachi. The 24-second clip, which was viewed more than 1,200 times, was posted at 11:42 PM and captioned, “کراچی میں بارش گاڑی میں پانی جمع [Rain in Karachi, water accumulates in a car].”
In the video, four men are sitting in a Toyota car, with the individual filming the clip in the passenger seat next to the driver, saying, “MashAllah [Praise be to God], Karachi enjoy kar rahe hein, yeh hamari gaari dekhein, yeh MashAllah talaab ka manzar… Haath hilaa dein… Bhutto zinda hai [We are enjoying Karachi, look at our car, this is the scene of a pond… Please wave… Bhutto is alive]!”
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check used reverse image tools and keywords to find the original video.
We came across this 26 August 2020 video on YouTube channel mrgtv and this 27 August 2020 tweet from Twitter user @qadeersidhu which contain the same video.
We concluded, therefore, that this video is not from the ongoing monsoon rains in Karachi but is in fact two years old.
Virality
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the 20-day period from 8 July 2022 to 28 July using the following search terms:
- “گاڑی بارش کراچی”
- “کراچی بارش گاڑی پانی”
The first search term turned up 43 posts that amassed almost 19,700 interactions on Facebook, whereas the second term showed close to 900 interactions across 14 Facebook posts.
Verified Facebook page ‘العربیہ اردو – Al Arabiya Urdu’ posted the video on 9 July and received over 6,300 views. Other Facebook pages, such as ‘ONN TV Online News Network TV’, ‘Tasawar Abbas’, ‘Justice For Umme Rubab Chandio’, and ‘Bilawal Zardari’, shared the clip on 11 July, 8 July, 7 July, and 7 July, respectively, and received 911 views, 2,600 views, 1,900 views, and 1,200 views, respectively.
We found that Samaa TV reporter Shakeel Ahmed also shared the video on 11 July on his verified Twitter account, with the caption, “کراچی میں جب زیادہ بارش ہوتا ہے تو زیادہ پانی آتا ہے، ماضی کی طرح اس بار بھی کراچی ڈوب گیا، پوچھنا یہ تھا کہ پچھلی ایک دیہائی سے حکومت کس کی ہے [When it rains more in Karachi, there is more water. Like in the past, Karachi was flooded this time. The question I wish to ask is: who is in the government for the past one decade?].” Ahmed, however, later deleted his tweet.
Conclusion: Despite recent posts suggesting otherwise, the video of a moving car inundated with water is, in fact, not recent; it surfaced back in 2020 when a similar monsoon season lashed Karachi.