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
A man rushing to save the driver of a truck that fell into the Saptakoshi River of Nepal
Fact
Viral video shows a man rushing to save a drowning man at a beach in foreign country and it has nothing to do with Friday’s truck plunge incident at Saptakoshi River
Two videos allegedly showing a man rushing to save the driver of a truck that plunged into the Koshi River after an accident on July 14 are going viral on TikTok.
A cargo truck with registration no Me 1 Kha 3007 had swerved off the road and plunged into the Koshi river after colliding with a bus coming from the opposite direction on July 14, media reports confirmed. Three persons including the driver travelling in the truck were rescued safely.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @kewalrai75 posted a video showing a man rushing to the water body to rescue a man apparently drowning in the water. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Salute to this brave man who mustered courage to save others without caring for his own life. After a truck plunged into the Saptakoshi River on July 14.” A patriotic tune praising the glory of Nepali people is played in the background.
The video posted on July 16 has garnered 633 likes, and 36 users have commented on it. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Another TikTok user @its_blackzone posted a one-minute thirty-five-second video with additional footage showing the plunge of the ill-fated truck into the Saptakoshi River. The video allegedly shows a man rushing towards the driver of the truck who almost drowned after the truck plunged into the Saptakoshi river. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Live accident in Saptakoshi River, please watch the full video. Please don’t forget to hit a like for this brave man who saved the truck driver. The truck fell off the bridge after colliding with a bus.” The video caption reads, “See how the truck accident happened in Saptakoshi.”
The video posted on July 16 has garnered 36 likes. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker investigation found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made by the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several keyframes and conducted reverse searches on them. The search results led us to several short videos published on YouTube. On checking a video published on the YouTube channel named Ramro Video, we found that the footage of a man rushing towards a drowning man and pulling him to safety exactly matched with the text superimposed on the video making the similar claim as in the viral footage. The text also claims the footage showed the incident from Saptakoshi river. “How can we praise the great man who saves another person’s life risking his own life.” However, we didn’t find the video claim convincing as we noticed that the water body doesn’t match with the Koshi dam area. We also noticed the sea beach, flags and huge concrete buildings on the frame at the beginning of the video.
Further, we took other keyframes from the short videos matching the viral videos and conducted reverse searches with google lenses that pointed us to a video posted on a Facebook page named ‘Factory78 Breaking Entertainment‘. The video dated 13 July posted on the Facebook page exactly matched the footage used in both the viral videos. The video title reads, “This guy saw someone drowning at the beach and ran without hesitation to save a life.”
Our findings clearly indicated that the footage doesn’t show a man rushing to save the life of a truck driver who drowned after the truck he was driving fell into the Saptakoshi River.
Then, we checked the comments made in the Facebook video and found mixed reactions. However, we couldn’t establish the truth behind the viral footage whether it is scripted or real as questioned in the comments.
We also looked up CCTV footage of Friday’s incident at Saptakoshi barrage bridge by using relevant keywords and found a video of CCTV footage showing how the truck plunged on Friday. The video frame exactly matched the footage used in the second viral video.
Conclusion
The viral videos allegedly showing a man rushing to save the life of the ill-fated truck driver that plunged into the Saptakoshi River at Nepal-India border on July 14 is misleading. The viral footage is not related to Nepal and posted in social media a day prior to the incident.
Result: False
Sources
Annapurna Express, July 14, 2023
Ramro Video /YouTube, July 14, 2023
Factory78 Breaking Entertainment /Facebook, July 13, 2023
Nepal Pristha, July 15, 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.
