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 essential today than ever before.
Claim
Massive landslide occurred at Mugling-Narayanghat highway
Fact
The viral video shows 2021 land collapse at Sirmur district in India’s Himachal Pradesh
At a time when reports of flash floods and landslides triggered by monsoon rains are making headlines, a video allegedly showing a massive landslide collapsing a road at Mugling-Narayanghat highway is going viral on TikTok.
Mugling is the key highway that links Nepal’s capital with the rest of the country, and the road stretch is prone to frequent landslides during the rainy season. The road section had recently been blocked for hours following a landslide on the night of July 1.
TikTok user @hari74016 posted a video showing a huge chunk of land collapsing along with a portion of a road. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Once again a landslide has occurred in Mugling.” Panic-stricken people are heard screaming in the background.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
The video posted on July 5 has garnered 37.6k likes, 1283 users have shared it and 670 people have commented on it until the last count.
Newschecker investigation found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker took a keyframe from the viral video and conducted a reverse search on it. The search threw up results matching the viral video.
We then checked an article titled ‘Watch: Massive landslide sweeps away portion of land in Himachal Pradesh‘ published on Indian Express online, we found that an image carried in the article bore resemblance to frames from the viral video. We found a twitter video embedded in the article published on July 30, 2021.
On checking the 30-second video, we found that the footage from 0.10-minute onwards exactly matched the viral video. The video caption reads, “Road goes down in a landslide after mountain cracks near Badwas, Nahan in Himachal Pradesh.”
Further, we also checked an article published on Outlook online on 30 July, 2021, and found the same video embedded in the article. The article confirmed that the video showed a hillside collapsing in Sirmur district in India’s Himachal Pradesh.
Our findings clearly show that the viral footage shows a 2021 footage of land collapse in Himachal Pradesh, and thus the video is misleading.
Conclusion
An old footage of a massive land collapse in Himachal Pradesh of India falsely shared as a recent landslide at Nepal’s Mugling-Narayanghat highway.
Result: False
Sources
The Indian Express, 30 July, 2021
Srinivas BV, 30 July, 2021
Outlook India online, 30 July, 2021
The Kathmandu Post Online, 2 July, 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 essential today than ever before.
