Unrelated Videos Shared As Recent Tiger Attack In Bengal's Sunderbans

A set of two graphic videos - one of a man being mauled to death by tigers and the other of a grievous facial injury, has been spliced together to falsely claim that it shows an incident in West Bengal's Sunderbans.

The graphic video is being widely shared on WhatsApp following a report of a tiger being caught in Kultali area of South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal. According to news reports, an adult Royal Bengal tiger, most commonly sighted in the mangrove region of the Sunderbans, was recently hiding in a paddy field after crossing a creek from the Sunderbans Reserve Forest area. The tiger was later trapped on December 7, 2021 night after eluding local villagers and forest personnel for 16 hours.

BOOM found that the video includes two old clips where one footage shows a man being mauled to death by tigers in China.

The video has also been edited to include a text in Bangla, which translates to, "Sundarbans' Maipith incident today date,, 1, 2021 Deba Roy".

(Original Caption in Bengali: সুন্দরবন মোই পীঠের ঘটনা আজ তারিখ,, 1, 2021 Deba Roy)

BOOM received the video on its WhatsApp helpline number for verification.

The video has not been included as it is disturbing in nature.

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Fact Check

BOOM was able to ascertain that the video has been created using two old and unrelated clips. We found that the colour of the pants' worn by the victims are different in both the videos. Below are screenshots of the video showing the victim attacked by tigers and a man lying with gory face injuries on the road.

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We separated the videos into two parts and ran reverse image searches on keyframes of both the videos.

Video 1

We performed a reverse image search on one of the keyframes showing a man being attacked by tigers and found a Daily Mail article published on January 29, 2017. The article reported about a man mauled to death by tigers in China.

The report states, "A young man has been killed by a tiger in front of his horrified wife and child after getting dragged into its zoo enclosure. The incident occurred at the Youngor Wildlife Park in the city of Ningbo, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Shanghai."

Taking a cue from this, we searched on YouTube and found a news bulletin carrying the video with same information uploaded on China's state-affiliated media network CGTN's channel on January 30, 2017.

Video 2

A reverse image search on the keyframes led us to the video uploaded on a dodgy website containing graphic, gory and pornographic videos. The video was uploaded on the website on May 18, 2021 with a caption in Russian which translates to, "No face after an accident."

BOOM has chosen not to link the website as it contains graphic content.

According to the comments, the video appeared to be an outcome of a road accident. One such comment read, "For the love of God... Always wear a helmet and fasten it".

However, BOOM could not independently verify the video. Since the video has been online since since May, 2021 it is not connected to any recent tiger attacks incident in Sunderbans of West Bengal.

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