Video from China’s reservoir falsely claims to be Koyna Dam from Maharashtra.
She/Her
- Tweet by Arshad Nadeem congratulating Neeraj Chopra is not genuine. - August 13, 2021
- Viral image that shows the “Release Dates” of COVID-19 variants is fake. - August 11, 2021
- Video from China’s reservoir falsely claims to be Koyna Dam from Maharashtra. - August 6, 2021
A video is been taking viral rounds on social media recently claiming that it shows Maharashtra’s one of the largest dams, the Koyna Dam. However it has been found that the the video is of the Xiaolangdi reservoir in Henan province of China, and not from Maharashtra. The claim was first seen on Twitter with a caption, “Just In – Koyna Dam – One Of The Largest Dams In Maharashtra, India Overflowing”. It was followed by hashtags like #Maharashtra and #India. Several social media users have also shared the video along with the same claim and the posts have gone viral online.
YOUTUBE
TRUTH
The video is from China, not India.
Several keyframes from the viral video was used to conduct a reverse image search on Google Chrome with the InVid extension. This lead to a photograph that was published in Dreamstime which is stock photographs website. This particular website allows users to download the preview images in the desired size and format. The caption of the image here reads, “June 19, the Xiaolangdi Reservoir in Henan Province regulate water and sand, from a man-made dam outlet flood peak.”
The Xiaolangdi Dam, which is situated in Jiyuan, Henan Province of China impounds the Yellow river and regulates water and sand, from a man-made dam outlet flood peak. Also, a search on TinEye showed us a result on imgur, an online image sharing and hosting website, which had the video published on 2 April 2019 with the caption, “Xiaolangdi dam, yellow river, China.”
Imgur, which is an online image sharing website had published a video on the 2nd of April, 2019 with a caption, “Xiaolangdi dam, yellow river, China.”
Later, taking cue from here, relevant keywords in Chinese was used and a video on the Facebook page of People’s Daily, which is a newspaper based out of China was found. This particular video has huge resemblance with the dam shown in the viral video.
Search related to the Xialongdi Dam also resulted in a video by Ruptly media, a Russian news agency. Th evideo that was captioned “China: Floodwater gushes out from Xiaolangdi Reservoir on Yellow River” was published on 22 August 2020 on the news agency’s YouTube channel.
News reports of water being released from Koyna dam were found online and one such was a report by The Indian Express, published on the 24th of July 2021. The article titled “Pune: River levels rise as more water discharged from Koyna dam, Kolhapur and Sangli on alert” didn’t however show the image of the Koyna Dam. “The district collectorate said in the past 24 hours, the Koyna dam catchment area has received 700 mm of rain, which has forced the Irrigation department to release more water from the dam”, read the byline of the article.
Earlier in 2009, the same video in the viral video was fact checked by The Quint. Back then, the video claimed that it showed an over-flowing Pawna Dam, which is located near Pune, Maharashtra.
Thus, from all the above cues, it is evident and clear that the viral post is false and does not show the Koyna Dam, but Xiaolangdi Dam of China.
