#FactCheck: Fake viral AI video captures a real-time bridge failure incident in Bihar
Executive Summary:
A video went viral on social media claiming to show a bridge collapsing in Bihar. The video prompted panic and discussions across various social media platforms. However, an exhaustive inquiry determined this was not real video but AI-generated content engineered to look like a real bridge collapse. This is a clear case of misinformation being harvested to create panic and ambiguity.
Claim:
The viral video shows a real bridge collapse in Bihar, indicating possible infrastructure failure or a recent incident in the state.
Fact Check:
Upon examination of the viral video, various visual anomalies were highlighted, such as unnatural movements, disappearing people, and unusual debris behavior which suggested the footage was generated artificially. We used Hive AI Detector for AI detection, and it confirmed this, labelling the content as 99.9% AI. It is also noted that there is the absence of realism with the environment and some abrupt animation like effects that would not typically occur in actual footage.
No valid news outlet or government agency reported a recent bridge collapse in Bihar. All these factors clearly verify that the video is made up and not real, designed to mislead viewers into thinking it was a real-life disaster, utilizing artificial intelligence.
Conclusion:
The viral video is a fake and confirmed to be AI-generated. It falsely claims to show a bridge collapsing in Bihar. This kind of video fosters misinformation and illustrates a growing concern about using AI-generated videos to mislead viewers.
Claim: A recent viral video captures a real-time bridge failure incident in Bihar.
Claimed On: Social Media
Fact Check: False and Misleading
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Executive Summary
A video is being shared on social media showing several people breaking iron barricades installed along the banks of a water body. The video is being shared with the claim that people broke the barricades after the Karnataka government imposed a ban on idol immersion to prevent pollution in the river. CyberPeace Research found the viral claim to be misleading. Our Research revealed that the video is not from Karnataka but from Hyderabad, Telangana. The video shows members of The Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Committee (BGUS) removing barricades installed at Tank Bund to prevent the immersion of Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols in the water body. The barricades had been installed following the High Court’s directions. Therefore, the claim linking the video to Karnataka is incorrect.
Claim:
A Facebook user shared the video with the caption: “Chaos erupts in Karnataka over the ban on idol immersion! Breaking the iron barricades, they said — ‘We will immerse the idols in the river itself!’” The post link, archive link, and screenshot are provided below.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1523733916224661
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/SJgmD
Fact Check
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the video. During the search, we found the same video on the Facebook page of Brut India. According to the post, the video is from Hyderabad. The caption states that despite the restrictions, devotees removed the barricades and made way during the Ganesh idol immersion at Hyderabad’s Tank Bund. The post link and screenshot are provided below.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2220012475615416
Taking the Research forward, we found the same video in a news report uploaded on the YouTube channel of ‘9Plus News’ on September 21, 2026. The report also includes the portion of the viral clip in which people can be seen breaking the barricades. According to the report, the incident took place in the Tank Bund area of Hyderabad. The post link and screenshot are provided below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7GRELjqAwY
Conclusion
Our Research found that the viral video is not from Karnataka but from Hyderabad, Telangana. The video shows members of the Bhagyanagar Ganesh Utsav Committee (BGUS) removing barricades installed at Tank Bund to prevent the immersion of Plaster of Paris (PoP) idols in the water body. These barricades had been installed following the High Court’s directions. Therefore, the claim linking the video to Karnataka is false.
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Introduction
A mass of people gathered in public is a common scene. All are eager for the same information, official estimates are delayed, and the space is then filled by whatever is earliest. In Delhi the gap was partially filled by old videos being described as new footage and by reports of injuries and deaths which police and fact-checkers have rejected. This report investigates what was claimed, by whom, and what has been validated. It does not take sides in the protests. It is focused on a small issue: how this false information travelled, why it was effective, and what the reader can do to combat it.
What was reported
India Today claimed that the ISI, the spy agency of Pakistan, posted a false injury report of a senior opposition leader, as well as fake reports of deaths, during the Delhi protests. That is what the publication's own headline says, and the claim of ISI links is based on sources, not an established fact.
Delhi Police has filed at least four FIRs against social media handles for creating fake content and attempts at building an "anti-India narrative", according to a report by The Week, quoting news agency ANI. Police said multiple Pakistani handlers reported deaths in the 10 October protest and shared fake videos while impersonating Indians. India TV reported that around 500 posts and 100 handles had been removed, citing unidentified sources and the police. There is no independent verification of those numbers in the material we reviewed.
What has been verified, and what has not
The strongest piece is from News Meter, a fact-checking organisation. It found two videos posted on X on 12 October. The first was purportedly a video of police firing on a rally and killing five workers. When searching the video for the beginning of its footage, NewsMeter found it on Facebook from 5 March 2020 and in a Times of India report about the February 2020 riots in Delhi's Chand Bagh locality. The second video, which was reportedly of soldiers beating a protester, has been posted on YouTube since 2019 and on news websites reports as early as 2017, according to News Meter. There is no evidence of firing at the rally. Another of the original fact checkers, NewsMeter, traced a video alleging an attack on a politician's residence to December 2019 rallies. The Delhi Police also labelled the claim of firing at the rally as a rumour on 12 October.
A few items still require substantiation. The ISI's direction is unconfirmed, and the accounts' source is police and other sources. News Meter identified the location data of one account as "South Asia" with a slight possibility of VPN use, and it examined its earlier report of Pakistan-based propaganda accounts' pattern, but nothing is definitive. Location tags are weak evidence. The death claims were deemed false by police, but no external investigation of either accusation exists in the information looked at.
How fabricated visuals travel
Recycled footage is effective because it is footage. The crowd, the violence – all of that is real; they just got the date and place wrong. Writer Claire Wardle and researcher Hossein Derakhshan have dubbed this entirely different genre of falsehood as a form of "misinformation" – where the lie is in the caption, but the pixels still tell the truth.
That's where the urgency comes in. The article published by News Meter closed with the plea to 'people to come on the road and block the city'. Short, scary and sensational messages are among the easiest to share. A 2018 Science paper by Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy and Sinan Aral found false news stories are about 70 per cent more likely to be retweeted than accurate stories and spread more rapidly, primarily because humans (not bots) retweeted them.
And platform design does, too. Recommendation algorithms tend to incentivise content engagement, and there's a tonne of engagement to be driven from anger. The credibility of accounts using pseudonyms or pretending to be local seems to come from the community they claim.
Why injury and death claims are different
The most powerful piece of rumour is the one in which a person has been killed or injured. It stirs mourning and fury, inflames crowds to violence, and leaves the rumour-monger little room for denial. Even in cases of retraction, the original story is often the one to stay. Delhi Police in its post cautioned that "malicious rumours" are an offence.
If false reports drown out the conversation, true reports of harm are then easier to write off. Official messaging needs the same due care as a viral post for the same reason: Public officials are party to the events they describe. Tone is no guarantee, not even "certainty". Multiple independent tellings can demonstrate it.
The damage extends further than the audience as well. If people are searching for loved ones, they might find a rumour; before they get confirmation from the individual, helplines can become overwhelmed, and reporters have all their time wasted following up claims that were planned to be followed up.
What responsible sharing looks like
But most of it is a run-of-the-mill habit. Put the brakes on before you forward something that fuels your fear or anger. Investigate who created the post, when the account was created. Reverse image search the videos with Google Lens or Tin Eye (that's how the Delhi videos were dated). Find the same report on outlets that credit their sources. Choose fact checkers that follow clear standards, like signatories of the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles.
If you've already posted something false, admit it and include the correction. Even quoting a rumour to ridicule it may publicise it, so if you can, describe the rumour instead.
Headlines that treat an allegation as fact or that post an initial report of a viral claim without verifying it lend the rumour a second platform. Pachyphonus warned against grabbing on to supposed "hedge words" like "alleged", "according to police" and "sources said" just to lighten the blow - they reveal how much a statement is worth.
Conclusion
The Delhi story highlights a trend that defies borders or specific occurrences. Old footage, solicitous captions and unproven reports of damage are constantly propagated because they seem meaningful. The claims of well-planned foreign accounts are "unsubstantiated allegations", and the proven age of the returned content is "old archive footage". The real stickler is maintaining those categories. Before rushing to share the next scary footage, consider who's sharing it, when it was shot and who else has verified it.
Sources
- India Today: Anti-CEC protests, ISI-linked Pakistan accounts and false claims (report this piece is based on)
- The Week: Several Pakistani social media handles under scanner for fake content
- India TV: Delhi Police takes down 500 social media posts
- NewsMeter: Videos are old, unrelated to anti-CEC protests
- NewsMeter: Video of alleged attack on residence is from 2019
- Times of India (2020): How Delhi cops tried to rescue their colleagues
- Delhi Police statement on X, 12 October 2026
- Vosoughi, Roy and Aral (2018), The spread of true and false news online, Science
- Wardle and Derakhshan (2017), Information Disorder, Council of Europe
- International Fact-Checking Network, Code of Principles
Executive Summary
Amid escalating tensions between Iran and Israel, a video showing a fighter jet launching a missile at a massive dam, followed by its collapse and widespread flooding, is being widely shared on social media. Users are claiming that the video depicts a recent Israeli airstrike on a petrochemical plant located along Iran’s Karun River. CyberPeace Research Wing research found that the viral claim is false. The video is not related to any real-world incident and has been generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Claim:
An Instagram user shared the viral video with a caption claiming that Israel carried out an airstrike on a petrochemical complex along Iran’s Karun River. The post further suggested that the facility is a key industrial site and that the attack caused widespread panic in the region. Post link:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZhNuiRx_v1/
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZhNuiRx_v1/
Fact Check:
A reverse image search of keyframes from the video led to its appearance on a Facebook page named Warfare NextGen. The page clearly described the footage as “dramatic content,” indicating that it is not a real incident.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1027249019882257
A closer analysis of the visuals also revealed several inconsistencies that raise doubts about its authenticity. To further verify the video, it was analyzed using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated a 99.4% probability that the content is AI-generated.
Additionally, a separate analysis using SIGHTENGINE also classified the video as approximately 99% AI-generated.
Conclusion:
The research confirms that the viral video is not a real incident. It has been created using artificial intelligence and is being falsely shared as a depiction of an Israeli strike on a petrochemical plant along Iran’s Karun River.
