By Archis Chowdhury
A video showing a child hanging on to a giant kite while being lifted high in the air is being shared on social media with the claim that it shows a 3-year old girl being lifted by a giant kite in Ahmedabad.
BOOM found this claim to be false; the video is from 2020, and shows a 3-year-old being lifted high in the air after getting entangled in a giant kite at a kite festival in Taiwan, in the northern city of Hsinchu.
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We found the video being shared on WhatsApp with the caption, "Three year old girl flew away with the kite in Ahmedabad... Thank God, she has come down safely... Very scary...?"
BOOM found the video being shared on Facebook with the exact same caption.
You can view some of the Facebook posts here, here and here.
Fact-Check
BOOM did a keyword search with "three year old lift by kite", which led us to a large number of news reports from August, 2020, about an incident that happened at a kite festival in Taiwan, in the northern city of Hsinchu.
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According to an article by the Associated Press from August 30, 2020, the girl was "reported safe after becoming caught in the strings of a kite and lifted several meters into the air".
Here is an excerpt from an article by the CNN on the incident:
"The international kite festival was being held in the city of Hsinchu, south of the capital Taipei. Video of the accident, which circulated widely on social media, show several people preparing the large long-tailed pale orange kite for flight next to a crowd of viewers. The kite is already billowing from the strong wind.
Then, the organizers let the kite go – and it flies up, along with a toddler dangling from its tail. It's not clear how close she was to the kite on the ground, or how she got caught in it.
Screams can be heard in the video as the child is lifted high into the air, being swung about wildly by the kite and wind. She was airborne for about 30 seconds before the kite was pulled low enough for audience members to grab and release her."
We also found a footage of the incident posted by South China Morning Post, which resembled the video being falsely shared as an incident from Ahmedabad.
