A video is viral on social media showing several cars engulfed by a fire and black smoke billowing out. A man can be seen escaping the fire in the first few seconds of this short clip.
It is overlaid with captions in Hindi, alleging that the fire had broken out on February 9, 2025 at the Maha Kumbh Mela. It further reports that around 40 to 50 cars had been burnt down in the incident.
A verified X account named ‘India with Congress‘ shared the viral video, alleging that the fire had broken out at the Maha Kumbh bus stand. (Archive)
However, the tweet was later deleted.
Several Facebook users also propagated the video with similar claims. (Archives: 1, 2, 3)
Fact Check
We broke down the viral video into several key frames. A reverse image search on one such image led us to this news report by Gulf News, published on July 14, 2020. The report carried the same visual.
In the report, it is mentioned that a fire had erupted near Cairo owing to a fracture in an oil pipeline, running through the Cairo-Ismailia desert highway. The fire was said to be triggered by a spark near the pipeline, which subsequently injured at least six people, according to the report.
Taking a cue from this, we ran relevant keyword searches, which led us to various other news reports on the same incident, stating that as many as 17 people had been injured in the fire. (Links: 1, 2, 3) One such report, by a news outlet called ‘Mena FM’ states that the fire had damaged as many as 30 cars, as well as a vehicle showroom.
On running another keyword search on YouTube, we came across a video uploaded by The Telegraph, on July 16, 2020. It shows the footage of the fire in Cairo, which has been amplified on social media with claims associating it to the Maha Kumbh festival.
In conclusion, a video clip showing several cars ablaze in a fire has been shared on social media, alleging that it shows a fire which had broken out at the bus stand of the Maha Kumbh venue. Alt News could verify that the video in question is more than four-year old, and shows footage of a fire in Cairo due to a ruptured crude oil pipeline.
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