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| - Fact Check: Misleading claims about this boy rescuing a baby deer flood social media
A series of images of a young boy trying to rescue a baby deer from the raging floodwaters is circulating on social media with the claim that they are from Assam.
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India Today Fact Check
These pictures are from 2014 when Bangladesh witnessed massive floods. They are not related to the current floods in Assam.
Assam is battling the twin crises of Covid-19 and floods. More than 80 people have lost their lives due to the floods so far that have ravaged over 2,400 villages spread across 24 districts of the state.
In this context, a series of images of a young boy trying to rescue a baby deer from the raging floodwaters is circulating on social media with the claim that this is from Assam. The images show the boy fully submerged in water but holding out the scared fawn.
Netizens are also comparing the boy to popular fictional characters “Baahubali” and “Sivagami”, as a couple of scenes from the blockbuster movie “Baahubali: The Beginning” resemble the feat.
Twitter user “Rakshith Shivaram”, also a Congress leader from Karnataka, shared the images with the caption: Real “Bahubali” of Assam who saved a fawn from drowning.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading. The images are from 2014 when Bangladesh witnessed massive floods. They are not related to the current floods in Assam.
The pictures, along with the same claim, are viral on Twitter and Facebook. The archived versions can be seen here and here.
AFWA investigation
Using keywords, we searched for news reports from Assam about the young boy. We could not find any credible source that reported the incident.
However, with a reverse search on the images, we found a “Daily Mail” report from February 2014, on floods in Bangladesh that carried similar pictures of the boy and the fawn. According to the report, the incident is from Noakhali district of Bangladesh.
The young fawn got separated from its family during the floods. Seeing its helpless condition, the boy, identified as Belal, risked his own life and rescued the fawn from the surging waters.
According to “Daily Mail”, the images were captured by wildlife photographer Hasibul Wahab during a photography trip to Noakhali and later distributed by Caters News Agency.
However, this is not the first time these images are being wrongly circulated.
One of the images from the series had found its way in Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal’s interim report on the 2016 floods to then Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. We found media reports from 2016 on the same.
Hence, the viral images of a young boy risking his life in a surging river to rescue a drowning baby deer are not from Assam. The images are over six years old and from Bangladesh.
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