The video surfaced online and showed that 121 people, the vast majority of them women, were killed in a deadly stampede in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh state.
AFP reported The incident occurred during a packed Hindu religious gathering attended by more than 250,000 people, more than three times the 80,000 people that organizers had allowed.
Initially, officers blamed a sandstorm for the panic. But police later said the stampede began when “devotees started collecting soil” from the ground where popular preacher Bhole Baba had passed.
The same clip was shared alongside similar false claims on Facebook here And here.
While the video does show an event for the same preacher, Bhole Baba, it took place in western India and the footage has been circulating since February 2024.
Old video
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the clip found that it matched the 7-minute mark of a longer video shared on YouTube on February 9, 2024 (archived link).
The Hindi title of the video is: “Happy Day Rupbas Bharatpur Rajasthan ~ Hymns of Narain Sakar Hari”.
Narain Sakar Harialias Bhole Baba, is the same preacher whose religious gathering led to the deadly stampede on July 2 (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of the clip shared in the fake messages (left) and the YouTube video (right):
The title of the video states Caterpillarsa village in Bharatpur district in the western Indian state of Rajasthan (archived link).
At 2:19 of the video, a bus stop sign with the name “Rupbas” and a sign for National Highway 123 can be seen, which matches Google Street View. imagery from the village (archived link):
Meanwhile, the tractors seen in the video bear the name of Ranjeeta Kolia former Member of Parliament from Bharatpur constituency (archived link).
