Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri shared a video showing a traffic signal being washed up in heavy downpour. Agnihotri claimed that the incident took place in Mumbai. “Hello Traffic Police of Mumbai,” his message said. “How much fine if the signal crosses the road?”
The video drew combined views of over 30,000 from his Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The same video has been circulated by individual users on both Facebook and Twitter. A user named Dr Shaharyar
shared it on Facebook in August. His post had over 1.2 lakh views and nearly 4,000 shares.
It was also shared last year with an identical claim.
Chinese video
A keyword search on YouTube for the term “traffic signal water” throws up several videos from last year confirming that the incident actually occurred in China. Chinese news network CGTN had posted a longer version of the same video on May 11, 2018. The visuals depicted in the 8-second clip currently viral can be seen in the video below from 0:13 seconds onwards.
According to CGTN, heavy rains in South China’s Yulin City caused a temporary traffic signal to sweep down a flooded street.
Chinese alphabets visible in the video further corroborate that it was not shot in India. The lights on the signal are working since it runs on solar energy. Solar panels are visible on top of the signal.
Last year, Agnihotri had tagged the Mumbai police claiming that screenshots of his tweets claiming that Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami was a pedophile were mischievously being circulated. As it turned out, Agnihotri actually indeed posted all the tweets but had taken them down later.
This article first appeared on Alt News.
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