Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Bomb planted outside Kathmandu Metropolitan City’s Mayor Balendra Shah’s residence at Gairigaun, Tinkune
Fact
Video shows the security personnel and locals in action after a bomb scare incident in Sinamangal on 19 July
A 58-second viral video claiming that a bomb has been recovered from the residence of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Mayor Balen Shah is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @love..kus000 posted a video of a live reporting of police and members of the general public swinging into action after finding a bomb in Kathmandu. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Bomb found outside Balen’s house [residence of Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah]. The house owner cries before the media.” The footage shows an apparent bomb disposal equipment and people yelling and running along with police personnel. We can also see a crowd of people capturing the arrest of a person on their mobile phones. The narrator says, “Respected viewers you can hear the people yelling and police have arrested and hand-cuffed a suspect for planting a bomb. This area remained tense after a bomb was found planted here.” While the crowd are saying, “Beat him.” The video also shows an interview of a person who says, “This is my house and the gold trader brother, who is also my neighbour, came this morning and showed a letter to me. The letter had demanded that the owner of Khotang Haleshi Gold Shop provide Rs 500,000 by the end of the day.” The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on July 21 has garnered 68.4K likes, 1258 shares and 992 people have commented on the video until the time of writing this article.
Newschecker investigation found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several keyframes and conducted reverse searches on them. But the results didn’t yield any results matching the video.
We, then, conducted a search on YouTube by using relevant keywords. The results pointed us to a video titled ‘House owner comes to media /Kathmandu Sinamangal Bomb news’ posted on the YouTube channel named ‘Desh Duniya Khabar’. The video frames exactly matched the viral video. On checking the video thoroughly, we found that the video showed an interview of the house owner in which he says how an “Improvised Explosive Device (IED)” along with a letter demanding Rs 500,000 was found outside a shutter rented by a jewellery trader.
However, we couldn’t confirm how the IED was defused.
Further, we conducted a search on google by using relevant keywords taking clues from the video. The search threw up several articles related to suspected IED scare at Sinamangal area in Kathmandu on July 19. On checking an article published on Kathmandu Post online, we found that Nepal Army personnel had disposed of a suspicious object placed outside a jewellery shop in Sinamangal on Wednesday.
We also checked an article published in the Himalayan Times online which confirmed that the suspected IED found outside a jewellery shop in Sinamangal was a hoax. The article quoted a Nepal Army Spokesperson Krishna Prasad Bhandari, who said the device was an old Nokia mobile phone wrapped with wires and black tape to give it the impression of a bomb.
Likewise, we didn’t find any media reports or hints that a bomb was planted outside the residence of KMC Mayor Balen Shah. We looked up the location of Balen Shah’s residence and found an article confirming that Mayor Shah lives at his private residence in Gairigaun, Tinkune in Kathmandu with his family.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming to show the scene outside Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah’s residence after a bomb scare is misleading. The viral video shows an incident after a suspected IED was spotted outside a jewellery shop in Sinamangal, Kathmandu.
Result: False
Sources
Desh Duniya Khabar, July 19, 2023
The Kathmandu Post, July 19, 2023
The Himalayan Times , July 19, 2023
Safalpaila.com , May 15, 2022
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
