Fact Check: Video of man floating away on waterlogged street is NOT from Chennai
India Today found that this is an old video from Pune. It has nothing to do with Cyclone Fengal or Tamil Nadu.
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India Today Fact Check
This is an old video from Pune, not Chennai. However, waterlogging has been reported in Chennai after heavy rains hit the region due to Cyclone Fengal.
Several districts of Tamil Nadu are in the grips of floods triggered by Cyclone Fengal. The cyclone has wreaked havoc across 14 districts of the southern state and affected 1.5 crore people, announced Chief Minister MK Stalin on December 2.
An unusual video now going viral purports to show a man floating along a waterlogged road in a crate in the Marina Beach area of Chennai.
An X user shared the video and wrote: “#CycloneFengal Vote for Freebies & Enjoy Boat ride on Road.” Its archive can be seen here.
India Today found that this is an old video from Pune.
Our Probe
With the help of a reverse image search, we found that the video was shared on June 8 on the Instagram account “dj_praful_official_”. It was captioned: “Yerwada part 2.” The account had shared another similar video on June 4 and captioned it: “Yerwada.” This one featured a man floating away on a mattress on the same waterlogged road.
Yerwada is an area in the Pune district of Maharashtra. The Instagram user, Praful Sonawane, mentioned in his profile that he lives in Pune.
The first video went viral on social media at the time when a torrential downpour waterlogged Pune’s streets. Many news organisations published stories about the video and said it was from Pune.
India Today also geolocated the street seen in the viral video. A board for the Deutsche Bank Group can be seen on a building behind the waterlogged street. Using this information, we found the building in Yerawada, Pune, on Google Street View.
The fact-checking unit of the Tamil Nadu government also debunked the claim that this video was from Chennai’s Marina Beach.
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