By Sk Badiruddin
An old video showing five people being swept away while trying to cross a waterfall near Indore is circulating on social media with claims that it shows the recent destruction of flooding in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa area.
The video shows five people being trapped amidst flash flooding and gushing waterflow in a hilly terrain; moments later, they are swept away. The video has been shared on Twitter with the caption, "I request to all the politicians of #Pakistan, don't think about your politics at this time, think about your people who are going through a lot of difficulties at this time, many people have drowned in #floods and sacrificed their lives. #FloodsInPakistan"
According to BBC reports the southern Sindh province of Pakistan has been experiencing havoc floods recently, that killed over 1000 people in the region.
The viral tweets can be seen here, here and a Facebook reel here.
Click here for an archive of one of the tweets.
The same video is viral with a claim in Urdu, "Floods in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa washed away the entire family." View a Facebook posthere.
(Original Text in Urdu: خیبرپختونخوا میں سیلابی ریلہ نے پوری فیملی کو بہا لے گیا)
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search with the keyframes of the viral video and we found an extended video of 2:10 minutes uploaded in December, 2015 by 'WildfilmsIndia' with the headline, "Waterfall incident in India sweeps family into the water." The video shows a group of people being alerted as they are suddenly caught in between a flash flood.
An excerpt from the description of the video reads, "This tragic accident happened at the Patalpani waterfall in Indore, when a father and his 4 kids celebrated the MBA graduation of the oldest daughter and got surprised by the freak flood. A tragedy for these 3 family members resulted - the father and 2 girls died while the 2 boys are alive."
Taking cue from this we ran a keywords search with a time frame on Google and found news reports on it.
According to an NDTV news report, the tragic incident happened on July 18, 2011. The report reads, "Rain tragedy in Indore: Family washed away at waterfall." Five people were trapped and swept away after the water level rose suddenly due to floods caused by the continuous spells of rainfall.
Indian Express reported on July 20, 2011 that 21-year-old Mudita Rathi's body was recovered by the rescue team. Mudita's friend and her father Chandrashekhar Rathi's bodies were found on July 18 and 19 respectively. Onlookers managed to rescue only two members of the family.
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