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.
A video claiming to capture a moment when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Dolakha district of Nepal is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be false.
TikTok user @kingarjun71 posted a video, showing people screaming and running in panic, and motorbikes and vehicles stopping suddenly as they wobble while moving. Text superimposed on the video reads, “An earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale with its epicentre in Dolakha district.”
The video posted on December 14 has garnered 41.4k likes, 268 shares, and 260 people have commented on it. Newschecker found the claim to be false.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took a keyframe from the video and conducted a reverse image search. The search threw up a video whose frames matched the viral video.
On checking a video posted on the YouTube channel of News24 Nepal on 30 July, 2015, we found the video’s frames from 0:25-minute timestamp exactly matched the viral video. The exclusive CCTV footage obtained by News24 was captured at Sundhara area in Kathmandu when the devastating earthquake of 7.8-magnitude struck Nepal on April 25, 2015 with its epicentre in Barpak, Gorkha.
Further, we looked up the website of the earthquake monitoring and research centre for the latest information regarding earthquakes in Nepal. We found that no major earthquake has been recorded in Nepal recently.
Conclusion
The video allegedly showing a moment when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Nepal with its epicentre in Dolakha district is false, the video actually shows CCTV footage from Sundhara in Kathmandu when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in 2015.
Result: False
Sources
Nepal Earthquake Monitoring and Research Centre
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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.
