An old video from 2018 showing a young boy caught by railway gangmen for placing stones on a railway track near Kalaburagi in Karnataka is being shared with a false claim that it is recent after the tragic train accident in Odisha's Balasore.
BOOM spoke to Wadi Railway Police under whose jurisdiction the incident occurred, who stated that the viral video is from 2018 and the young boy was playing with stones near the railway tracks near Kalaburagi.
On June 2, 2023, the Shalimar Chennai Coromandel Express (12841) en route Chennai from Shalimar, West Bengal, met with an accident near Bahanaga Bazar station in Odisha’s Balasore district. The accident has resulted in the deaths of 288 people so far and left over 1000 people injured. The Railway Ministry has sought a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the incident.
In the video, a group of railway gangmen, who look after the maintenance of railway tracks, can be seen scolding a young boy. Several stones placed on the track can be seen in the foreground. They can be heard talking in Kannada.
The viral video was tweeted by the Twitter user Arun Pudur (@arunpudur) claiming that a train accident was prevented in Karnataka after the Odhisa train accident and claiming that the boy was trying to cause a train accident.
Pudur tweeted with the caption, "Shocking: Another #TrainAccident Averted. An underage boy was caught sabotaging the railway Track this time in #Karnataka. We have tens of thousands of Kms of railway tracks and forget adults now even kids are being used for sabotaging and causing deaths. This is a serious issue. Please look into this @AshwiniVaishnaw @RailMinIndia @RailwaySeva"
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Times Now reported on the viral video including the above tweet in their article stating that the video is going viral, however, it does not mention that the video is old and not recent after the Odhisa train accident.
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The same video was carried by the right-wing website Hindu Post without any mention that the video is not recent.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video dates back to 2018 near Kalaburagi in Karnataka and is not a recent video showing a young boy placing stones on a railway track after the Odhisa train accident.
We broke the viral video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search using relevant keywords and found the video has been posted on Facebook dating back to 2018. The same video was uploaded on Facebook on May 12, 2018, as seen in the post below.
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Taking a hint from some replies stating the Kannada dialect spoken in the viral video is from Kalaburagi.
We then reached out to Railway police stations nearby like Bidar Railway Police and Raichur Railway Police who stated that the incident happened in 2018 and that it comes under Wadi Railway Police Station.
BOOM reached out to Wadi Railway Police who confirmed that the incident is from 2018 when railway gangmen had caught and scolded a young boy who was playing on the tracks and had placed stones on the lines. "This is a video from 2018, the boy was caught by railway gangmen when he was playing on the tracks and placing rocks on it. There was no case filed," M. Pasha, Police Sub Inspector of Wadi Railway Station told BOOM.
We also reached out to Circle Inspector Ravi Kumar who also stated that the viral video is from 2018. "This is an old video from 2018, the children were playing and had placed stones on the track after which the track men caught them," Kumar told BOOM.