Fact Check: Old Video Of Flooded Road From Bangladesh Falsely Linked To West Bengal

A picture of a boat being used to commute in a waterlogged street, crowded with vehicles, is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows visuals from Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

One such post was shared with the caption “আমি চ্যালেঞ্জ করে বলতে পারি,পৃথিবীতে আর কোনো দেশ নেই কোনো নদি নেই,এমন কি কোনো শহর ও নেই যেখানে একই রাস্তায় বাস,বাইক,আর নৌকা এক সাথে চলতে পারে, আমরা গর্ব কিরে বলতে পারি,আমরা বাঙালি।কেননা এটা শুধুমাত্র আমাদের লন্ডনে সম্ভব।”

(Translation- I can challenge you to say, there is no other country in the world, no river, not even a city where buses, bikes and boats can run on the same road, we can proudly say, we are Bengali because this is only possible in our London.)

The caption is in reference to a statement by the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee where she commented about turning ‘Kolkata into London’.

Here’s the link to the above post. More posts can be viewed here and here.

FACT CHECK 

NewsMobile fact-checked the post and found the claim to be false.

We put the picture through Reverse Image Search and found a similar picture in a report by a local Bangladeshi website, BDnews24.com. The headline of the report read, “Mirpur waterlogging”.

The report published on June 1, 2018, stated that pedestrians faced huge sufferings due to waterlogging on Rokeya Sarani at Kaziparha in Dhaka’s Mirpur after rains on June 1.

“Boat service is launched to ferry commuters on Rokeya Sarani at Kaziparha,” the caption read.

On comparing the visuals of the report to the post in question, we could see some similarities between both the locations which suggested that the viral video was shot in Bangladesh.

In the better quality pictures, the text ‘Dhaka Mass Rapid Transit Development Project’ (Dhaka Mass Transit Company Ltd.)’ is clearly visible on the banners by the road.

Further, we found more pictures from the same location in the report. We compared the picture in the report to the picture in the claim, which made it clear that the picture was taken in Bangladesh.

Based on this, we ran a keyword search and found several media reports from June 2018 reporting about the waterlogging situation in Mirpur.