Old Video Of Mobile Tower Blaze Linked To Farmers' Protest

A video from June 2017 showing a mobile tower that caught fire accidentally is being peddled online with a false claim that protesting farmers set a Jio telecommunication tower on fire to mark their protest in the ongoing Kisan Andolan.

Farmers from Punjab and Haryana are protesting three farm laws legislated by the Centre. The farmer unions argue that these laws will damage prospects of Indian farming and do not guarantee minimum selling price or MSP. The agitation has also seen widespread anger against two business houses - Adani group and Reliance Industries which owns mobile and data service provider Jio. According to news reports thousands of Jio mobile towers were vandalised in Punjab. Read here.

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The viral clip is being shared with a caption in Hindi which translates to: "Right now, master of Narendra Modi, Mr Ambani has been ousted from the list of top ten richest people but if the kisan andolan lasts till Holi, he will be bankrupt."

(Original text: अभी तो @narendramodi के मालिक अंबानी सिर्फ़ टॉप 10 से बाहर हुआ है और अगर 'होली' तक #किसान_आंदोलन चलता रहा तो उसका दिवाला निकल जायेगा)

The caption refers to the recent Bloomberg Billionaire Index where Mukesh Ambani, with $76.5 billion is ranked 11th.

A few posts sharing the video can be seen below and their archived versions are accessible here, here, and here.

Also Read:Activist Surat Singh's 2015 Photo Linked To Farmers' Protest

Fact Check

BOOM did a reverse image search on Yandex with a screenshot from the video. An Amar Ujala report was found to have published screenshots from the same viral video in 2017.

The report states that the incident had happened on June 28, 2017, in Dehradun.

"A fire broke out in the mobile tower on the roof of the house at Ankit Puram on GMS Road on Wednesday morning [28 June 2017]. However, the fire brigade responded on the received information and extinguished the fire," read the report.

The report further states, "a mobile tower is installed on the roof of the house owned by Shakti Kumar Mehta, a resident of Ankit Puram on GMS Road. The fire broke out in the tower at around 5 am on Wednesday. Shortly after, the flames skyrocketed," according to the report.

BOOM then searched with relevant keywords from the above report and found that the same video story had been published by News 18 Hindi on June 29, 2017, as well. We also compared the screenshot of the viral video with one of the snippets published by Amar Ujala. We found that the incident is the same.