Is this viral video of people in long queue of Dharavi post Lockdown?
A video of 90 ft Dharavi road went viral on Social Media. This video shows hundreds of people standing in queues which the video captions claim to be for free food. This video became viral amidst the lock-down and thus claims that the government is incompetent to take necessary safety measures.
The following video is viral-
I'm really scared of how we'll fight with #Corona😥😥
This is the condition of #Dharavi of Mumbai yesterday when people came out of their house to collect food packets.
Already 5 people died here due to #corona n its the largest slum area of Asia.#मजदूर_बेहाल pic.twitter.com/gLPIuzphwV— Sumra (@Sumra_tweets) April 11, 2020
This video was shared from April 6th till April 9th before it started resurfacing again.
Food queue at #Dharavi #lockdown pic.twitter.com/qEbnZYTJkS
— Shobhaa De (@DeShobhaa) April 8, 2020
This video was also shared by the official handle of Shobha De which garnered around 528 retweets and 64.2K views. The earliest video posted on twitter was of 3rd April 2020.
This video was shared on facebook on 13th April 2020. This post was also widely shared on Facebook.
To trace back its origin, the language being spoken in the background is Tamil and upon google reverse image search it was revealed that this video was uploaded by a news website called Top Tamil News on 4th April 2020.
Here is the link-
வேலை இல்லாததால் உணவுக்காக நீண்ட வரிசையில் நிற்க வேண்டிய நிலைக்கு ஆளான மும்பை தாராவி மக்கள்!#Mumbai #Dharavi #coronaupdatesindia #Lockdown21 pic.twitter.com/KvYHFg8xKR
— Top Tamil News (@toptamilnews) April 4, 2020
TRUTH
This video is indeed of Dharavi but the suggested timeline seems to be wrong. This video was recorded during the third week of march before the Lockdown was announced. People have been sharing this video claiming this it to be government’s incompetency to maintain the lockdown.
Kiran Dighavar, Assistant Commissioner G/North & Nodal Officer Swachha Bharat Abhiyan, posted this video on his personal twitter account and tagged official page of BMC on 9th of April 2020.
Attention please
This is Old video roaming around @mybmc is responsible enough to distribute the food/grocery in decentralised way by practicing social distancing.For details kindly read the strip in the video.
Kindly help us to stop wrong news spread
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻@mybmcWardGN pic.twitter.com/Ucv5fe1Jc6— KIRAN DIGHAVKAR (@DighavkarKiran) April 9, 2020
The video was uploaded with a strip in the bottom saying that this is an old video and shouldn’t be used to agitate public against government bodies.
This was then retweeted by the official twitter handle of Ward-GN BMC.
The Free Press Journal took an interview of Kiran Dighavkar in which he confirmed that this was a video of a food distribution event in Dharavi held by a local corporator before the lockdown of 22nd April and was being used to agitate people and spread false fear.
“MUMBAI: Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic, the BMC ward office in Dharavi is now battling to keep “fake news infodemic” at bay. At the time when the civic body is struggling to implement the rule of social distancing and isolation across Dharavi, the hard way, a video showing hundreds of Dharavi residents queuing up for food has gone viral across social media.
With hundreds of tweets and retweets, the video has become a cause of major concern not just for the residents and social activists but also BMC officials. This prompted the civic officials to issue a clarification stating that the video is an old one and is being used to spread panic in the city.” Source – Free Press Journal
