Dramatic footage of a truck being swept away by a strong current in India has been viewed tens of thousands of times in posts falsely claiming it was filmed in the northern Thai city of Chiang Rai amid floods in September 2024. The video has circulated in news reports since July this year about heavy rains in India’s northern district of Haridwar.
“A truck carrying supplies to Chiang Rai could not withstand the current and sank. Officials were able to rescue the driver,” read the caption alongside the video on social media platform X on September 15, 2024.
The 21-second clip shows a vehicle being swept away by a strong current.
The same video was shared with a similar false claim on TikTok here and here; and Facebook here.
The posts circulated online after northern Thailand was severely affected by flash floods as Typhoon Yagi barrelled through Southeast Asia in early September and left more than 700 people dead (archived link).
Northern Thailand was badly affected, with one district in Chiang Rai on the Myanmar border reporting its worst floods in 80 years (archived link).
However, the video was taken in northern India in July 2024.
India flood
A reverse image search on Google using one of the video’s keyframes found an article published by the Hindi-language newspaper Amar Ujala on July 31, 2024 (archived link).
According to the Hindi-language report, a truck was carried away by a strong current after a downpour in India’s northern city of Haridwar. No one was inside the vehicle when the incident happened, it said.
The article also included the same clip shared on the newspaper’s X account (archived link).
In the clip, local bystanders can be seen on the right-hand side of the footage, and one person can be heard saying the name of a Hindu god at the video’s ten-second mark.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the clip in the false post (left) and the clip shared on Amar Ujala’s X account (right):
By magnifying the clip, AFP found the words “All India Permit” displayed on the front of the truck — a reference to a mandatory licence for commercial vehicles transporting goods in the South Asian country.
Below is a screenshot of the clip with the words highlighted by AFP:
Local media including the Navbharat Times and India TV shared the clip in their reports about the same incident (archived links here and here).
Haridwar, a pilgrimage destination in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, experienced significant flooding after days of continuous rain in late July 2024, according to local media (archived link).
AFP reported that the monsoon downpours caused flash floods that killed 13 people across Uttarakhand (archived link).
AFP has debunked misinformation related to Thailand’s floods in September 2024 here, here and here.
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