A shocking video showing four people falling to the street while escaping a blazing inferno in a building as firefighters scramble and a hapless crowd looks on, is from Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The four-minutes-and-seventeen seconds clip is viral in India on WhatsApp and social media with a false claim that the fire occurred at an office building in the suburb of Andheri in Mumbai.
Screenshot of a WhatsApp message sharing the video A shorter 30-second long clip is being shared on Facebook.
Screenshot of the video shared on Facebook The video shows trapped occupants fleeing the raging inferno using television cables on the periphery of building to slide down. Others used ropes lowered by emergency services. However, four individuals fall to their deaths from the steep height, while trying to escape.]
People speaking in Bengali can be heard in the video.
Note the below video is extremely distressing in nature.
FACT-CHECK BOOM first broke down the video into key frames and ran a reverse image search, which did not yield any results.
We then looked for the video across all social media platforms with the keywords from the viral message i.e. - 'Andheri', 'Raheja Mall', 'Mumbai' and 'fire'
The same video was uploaded to YouTube on April 16, 2019 with a caption that claimed the incident took place in Mumbai.
However, in the comments section of the video a YouTube user pointed out that the video was actually from Dhaka.
We then went back to a reverse image search and changed Google's "best guess" field to "Dhaka fire" and were able to find an image which matched the video.
Screenshot of a reverse image search changing the 'best guess' to 'Dhaka fire'
We found a 'visually similar' image belonging to stock images website Shutterstock. The signboards of 'Kindred' and 'Bata' in the photo matched those in the video. Other Shutterstock photos helped us confirm we were looking at the same fire.
We then performed a second reverse image search on the above image and were directed to news articles on the fire.
Banani Fire, Dhaka, Bangladesh At least 25 people were killed, including six who fell to their deaths, and over 70 injured in a devastating fire that ripped through 22 storey FR Tower on March 28, 2019 in Dhaka's Banani area, an upmarket commercial hot spot of the Bangladeshi capital.
Trapped office goers were seen screaming for help as worried onlookers from the adjacent Kemal Ataturk Avenue starting crowding below the building.
Banglades's Daily Star reported that the fire broke out at 12.50 pm and it took 22 firefighting units, along with the army, the navy and the air force to douse the fire by 7 pm on March 28.