An old video from Odisha after passengers travelling in a bus were electrocuted to death is being shared with false claims that it shows those who were burnt to death in the recent violence in West Bengal.
On March 21, Bhadu Sheikh, a deputy Pradhan, was allegedly killed by some miscreants. Hours later, in an alleged act of revenge killing, a mob killed at least eight people and gutted around 10 houses. The Calcutta High Court on Friday ordered a CBI probe into the incident.
The 44 seconds graphic video shared on Twitter shows charred bodies of people including women on the ground with a crowd surrounding them and a bus can also be seen in the background.
The video has been shared on Twitter with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "Today, fire in West Bengal, tomorrow North East would catch fire. But it does not impact us, as our Government is not there. (sic)"
Warning - Video is graphic in nature.
(Original texts in Hindi: आज प. बंगाल जल रहा है कल उत्तर पूर्व जलेगा और परसों दिल्ली... लेकिन हमें क्या हम तो वहां हमारी सरकार नहीं है कहकर पल्ला झाड़ लेंगे!)
See the archived version of the two tweets here and here.
BOOM also received the video on its WhatsApp helpline for verification.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse search on the keyframes using Yandex and found a YouTube video uploaded on February 9, 2020 by Asian Times with the title, "Bus catches fire after contact with High Tension wire" (in Hindi: "हाईटेंशन लाइन की चपेट में आई बस") and stating that the incident happened in Odisha.
By using keywords search we found several news stories about the the incident reported on Odia news outlets such as Kanak News and Kainga Tv.
According to report published in the Hindustan Times on February 10, 2020, ten people including three children and three women were electrocuted to death and over 30 injured when a bus in which they were travelling came in contact with an overhead 11KV live transmission wire in Odisha's Ganjam district. The people were on their way to attend a marriage negotiation ceremony, reported on Mumbai Mirror.
BOOM has compared the bus seen in the viral video and on the reports published by Kanak News and Kalinga TV and found that they are the same.