Claim: A video on X shows the District Municipal Corporation (DMC) administrator and his team falling into Karachi’s Gujjar Nullah while cleaning the area.
Fact: The claim is false as the video is not from Karachi but from India and shows the then Mayor of Panaji Surendra Furtado, along with others, as their boat capsized during an exercise in Goa.
On 30 April 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video (archive) with the caption, “During the Gujar Nala cleaning, the DMC administrator, Karachi, and other senior workers fell into the Nala because of an overcrowding on top of the machine.”
The minute-long video shows a group of men standing on a boat with a machine. The men can be seen starting a machine but the boat overturns dumping everyone in the sewerage.
Fact or Fiction?
The Gujjar Nullah, a small stream in Karachi, merges with the Lyari River which flows into the Arabian Sea. Currently, it is one of the few natural drains in Karachi. Soch Fact Check investigated the video after it was implied that it showed Karachi administration workers falling during the cleaning of the Gujjar Nullah.
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video to investigate the claim. The results on Google led to a YouTube video uploaded on 27 June 2016 by an Indian news outlet, India Today. The video report, titled, “Photo-Op Of Panaji Mayor Ends Up In Sewage Caught On Camera” shows the same footage as the viral clip, though from a slightly different angle.
According to the description, the video shows, “A PR exercise of the Mayor of Panaji, Goa” which was caught on camera as it “went horribly wrong”. The description detailed that, “The Mayor, Surendra Furtado, two journalists and four others had a lucky escape when the weed remover boat they were in capsized in Goa. The mayor had invited journalists to showcase the Municipalities efforts to clean up the drains and creeks in Panaji.”
V6 News Telegu also used the same footage in a telecast news report on the incident from 27 June 2016. When translated into English, the news telecast describes that the mayor of Panaji and those accompanying him managed to escape from “a weed removal mechanism outfitted boat” which had capsized in a sewer.
Hindustan Times and another news outlet also reported on the incident when it took place in 2016, while adding that all seven men, including Furtado, were rescued.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Karachi, Murtaza Wahab, tweeted about his well-being and confirmed that the video does not show Gujjar Nullah or the Karachi administration workers.
Virality
On X the video received 61,600 views, 344 likes and 180 reposts. It can be seen here.
It was also shared here, here, and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: A video on X falsely claims to show Karachi administration workers and Mayor Murtaza Wahab falling into a sewerage. The video is from 2016 and shows the mayor of Panaji, India along with others as their boat capsized during a weed-removal exercise.
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Background image in cover photo: Dawn
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