Fact Check: Old Videos Shared As Recent Flooding At Mumbai's Gateway Of India
Two videos showing a flooded Gateway of India in Mumbai are circulating on social media. The videos claim to depict recent heavy rains in the city.
The Verdict [Misleading]
Both videos were recorded during Cyclone Tauktae's landfall in May 2021 and do not depict recent events in Mumbai.
What is the claim?
Two videos showing a flooded Gateway of India in Mumbai, Maharashtra, are circulating on social media. The videos claim to depict recent heavy rains in the city, with the footage showing water flooding the area around the monument from two different angles.
One video offers a distant view of the Gateway, with water surging onto the streets from the sea. The other provides a street-level perspective of waves crashing into the streets, with the Gateway visible in the background.
A Facebook user shared one video with the caption: “GATEWAY OF INDIA 25 JULY 2024 MUMBAI.” Archived versions of this and similar posts are available here, here, here, and here.
However, our investigation revealed that both videos are from 2021, during the passage of Cyclone Tauktae through Maharashtra.
What we found
Video 1
A reverse image search of keyframes from the aerial view video led us to a CNN-News18 video, dated May 17, 2021, titled “Maharashtra: Water Flooding Around Gateway Of India & Hotel Taj As Cyclone Tauktae Wrecks Havoc.” This video shows the same frames depicting flooding around the Gateway of India. The video also shows the flooding around the monument from a height.
A news article by News18 (archived here), published on May 18, 2021, titled “Gateway of India Thrashed by Waves amid Cyclone Tauktae,” includes screengrabs and X posts from May 2021 featuring this video.
Cyclone Tauktae, an extremely severe cyclonic storm, struck India’s west coast in May 2021. It caused significant damage and fatalities due to high tides and power outages and was one of the strongest storms to hit Mumbai since 1891.
Video 2
A reverse image search shows that this video first appeared online in May 2021. It was uploaded to ShareChat on May 18, 2021 (archived here), and was also shared by NSNow, a regional news outlet, on May 19, 2021 (archived here), under the title “Gateway Of India Mumbai in Taute Tufan | Cyclone Tauktae.”
Although the original source of both videos could not be definitively identified, they were confirmed to be online before the 2024 monsoon season began.
Mumbai experiences severe flooding every year during the monsoon season, causing frequent disruptions due to water-logging and infrastructure failures. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) issued an orange alert for Mumbai on July 26 and a yellow alert for July 27, forecasting heavy to moderate rainfall across Maharashtra.
The verdict
The videos are from 2021, when Cyclone Tauktae impacted Mumbai and India’s west coast, and have been misleadingly associated with the 2024 monsoon season.
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