The video shows a high-speed train passing through a tunnel in China, not India
The video has been viewed more than two million times with similar claims on Facebook and social media site X.
However, the railway is still under construction.
“The work of this railway in Uttarakhand is not yet complete and the target is to complete it by December 2025. The track itself is not yet finished,” Ajit Singh Yadav, the senior manager of the Uttarakhand railway project, told AFP on October 16. .
India’s Ministry of Railways had previously shared images on X on September 19 showing the ongoing construction of the railway line (archived link).
The viral video shows a railway line in China’s Hunan province.
China’s high-speed train
A reverse image search followed by a keyword search on Google found a similar video uploaded to the Chinese version of TikTok Douyin on October 2, 2024.
Commenting on this post, he said the video was filmed near the city of Yanbodu in Cili County in China’s Hunan province.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the fake post (left) and the video uploaded to Douyin (right):
A user based in Hunan shared another aerial video of the same angle on the railway line on October 5, 2024.
The same video was shared by other users on Douyin here as well here, and on Instagram here with the caption that it is located in Yanbodu Town of Hunan Province (link saved).
Some keyword searching led to a longer version of the clip on YouTube and X (archived links here and here).
A satellite image of the Cili region on Google Earth accompanies the observations in a longer version of the video (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of frames from the video (left) and images from Google Earth (right) with the same features highlighted:
AFP has released footage of Chinese railways passed off as Indian here and here.
