Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
Claim
Visuals from a rescue operation in flood-hit Telangana
Fact
We conducted Google reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video along with the keywords “Helicopter rescue floods”. This led us to a report by TeluguStop.com, dated November 19, 2021. Featuring an image similar to a frame of the viral clip, the report stated “A chopper from the Indian Air Force (IAF) was able to lift 10 people who were stranded at Chitravathi in Anantapur’s Chitravathi district.”
Now, by using a keyword search for “IAF Helicopter rescue Anantapur’s Chitravathi”, we found multiple reports of November 2021 elaborating the same incident. One such report by Hindustan Times, dated November 20, 2021, carried two images similar to the frames of the viral video. The caption of the images read, “The Mi-17 helicopter can be seen carrying out winching operation to rescue people stranded on the top of a JCB machine. The images were credited to ‘@IAF_MCC’.
Following this, we looked up the official Twitter account of the Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) and found a tweet thread of November 19, 2021, showing visuals of a helicopter evacuating people stuck in a river.
The caption of the tweet read, “Today, @IAF_MCC Mi-17 heptr evacuated ten people stuck in the rising waters of Chitravati river in Ananthapur district, Andhra Pradesh, in difficult weather conditions.”
On comparing the video shared by the Indian Air Force with the viral clip, we could conclude that they showed the same incident.
At that time, several news outlets had carried videos and images of this rescue by the IAF. You can check them here, here and here.
Notably, Telangana is in fact embattled with floods and army was also called in for rescue operations.
We can thus conclude that the viral video claiming to show recent rescue operations in flood-hit Telangana is actually an old video from Andhra Pradesh.
Result: Partly False
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Authors
Vasudha noticed the growing problem of mis/disinformation online after studying New Media at ACJ in Chennai and became interested in separating facts from fiction. She is interested in learning how global issues affect individuals on a micro level. Before joining Newschecker’s English team, she was working with Latestly.
