An old and unrelated video from Bangladesh showing an overcrowded train is being shared with a false claim that it shows a special Shramik train carrying migrant workers headed from Mumbai, Maharashtra to West Bengal.
The video starts with showing several people walking on the railway tracks who then make way for a train. Every inch of the train including the roof appears to be taken up by people holding on it to.
The clip is being shared as hundreds of migrant workers are walking long distances on highways to reach their home states following the Coronavirus driven lockdown. In the third phase of its lockdown, the central government announced special trains in coordination with state governments to help migrants return to their home states.
The viral clip is being shared with the caption, "Mumbai to Westbengal migrant train 10/5/2020"
BOOM received the viral video on its WhatsApp helpline number (7700906111) inquiring about it.
The video is viral on social media with the misleading caption.
Mumbai to West Bengal migrant train on 10th May 2020 pic.twitter.com/kQ1QYj89GP
— Luxy Joy (@joy_luxy) May 14, 2020
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FACT-CHECK
We broke down the video into key-frames and performed a reverse image search using Yandex, which search results showed that the video dates back to 2018, and taken during Biswa Ijtema when devotes catch special trains to reach Tongi in Bangladesh.
The search results first showed a video uploaded on Youtube with the caption, "Bangladesh railway" which indicated that the video was from Bangladesh,
On scrolling the recommended section on YouTube we found a 2.50 minutes older video dated February 25, 2018, with the same visuals as in the viral clip. The description of the video states that the train in the video is a Bishwa Ijtema Special Train which was run during the occasion of Bishwa Ijtema in 2018.
During Bishwa Ijtema which is one of the biggest annual gatherings of Muslims in Bangladesh, as prayers are held in a 160 acre field on the bank of the Turag river at Tongi, which is on the outskirt of Dhaka. The Bangladesh Railway operates three-day special train services from several destinations in the country for the devotees participating in the Biswa Ijtema.
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