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
A powerful tornado ripping through a part of Indian capital Delhi
Fact
Viral video shows a tornado sweeping across the northeast China’s Liaoning province
A 14-second video allegedly showing a tornado hitting an area in New Delhi, the capital of India, is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
The claim comes in the wake of tropical cyclone Biparjoy sweeping across several parts of India, unleashing a trail of destruction. News reports have suggested that Delhi received light rain and strong winds on June 16 as a result of Cyclone Biparjoy which made landfall in Gujarat the previous day.
TikTok user @furkekaji143 posted a video of an intense storm. Text superimposed on the video reads, “A powerful tornado in Delihi, everyone stay alert. The cyclone is likely to hit Nepal too. The destruction of tornado.” The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on June 15 has garnered 40.9k likes, 1953 users have shared it and 398 people have commented on it.
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. The results led us to a video from China whose frames from 0.8-minute onwards bear resemblance to the viral video. On checking the video dated June 2, 2023 published on CGTN, a government run news website, showed a tornado striking northeast China’s Liaoning province on June 1.
Taking a clue from the video, we conducted a search on YouTube and found a video whose frames exactly matched the viral video. The video published on a Chinese channel named ‘Zhongfeixin’ was posted on June 4, 2023. We translated the video title with the help of google translate and found that the video title read, “20230601, Fuxin City, Liaoning Province, tornado #中国 #China.’
Here is a comparison of the frames between the viral video and the YouTube video from China.
Further, we found another video titled ‘[Amazing Vids] Tornadoes Hitting Liaoning Province’ whose frame from the 3.25-minute timestamp exactly matched the viral video. The descriptions of the video published on the YouTube Channel named ‘Disaster Compilations’ on 6 June, 2023 confirmed that a tornado tore through Jingouzi township in the city of Tieling, Liaoning province on 1 June, 2023.
Thus, our findings clearly showed that the video showed a tornado sweeping through Jingouzi township in Liaoning Province.
Conclusion
The viral video purporting to show a tornado sweeping over an area in India’s capital Delhi is misleading as the video is actually from northeast China.
Result: False
Sources
CGTN, 2 June, 2023
Zhongfeixin, 4 June, 2023
Disaster Compilations, 1 June, 2023
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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.
