On August 29, Lucknow edition of Amar Ujala, a leading Hindi daily, published four images supposedly showing poor condition of roads in the city. In these images, a person wearing a helmet can be seen posing on pothole-ridden roads. Amar Ujala stated that these images were sent to them by a concerned citizen.

UP Congress Committee’s social media vice-chairperson Pankhuri Pathak posted two similar-looking images and took a jibe at the ruling BJP government in the state. Pathak had also shared the images with the same claim on her Facebook page.

In response to her tweet, some people tweeted a screenshot of an Instagram post where it was claimed that the images were from Bilaspur, a city in Congress-ruled Chattisgarh.

At the same time, some even claimed these images were from Bihar.

Fact-check

With a reverse image search on Russian search engine Yandex, we found the same images posted on a blog (aanavandi.com) on October 14, 2019. Here, the images were said to be from West Bengal.

In the blog, some more similar images have been posted. One of the images shows a billboard carrying a picture of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee along with Bengali text.

Moreover, the image on the blog seems to be a better quality photograph of the one viral on social media. With a closer look at the images, we were able to spot vehicles that bore a number plate beginning with “WB” suggesting that these are vehicles are registered in West Bengal.

Upon performing a keyword search in Bengali, we found a report by Dhaka 18 which carried these images. According to the report, images of pothole-ridden roads in Malda were shot by a resident of West Bengal’s English Bazaar Sangeet Roy. It also informed that Roy had posted these images on his Facebook account.

We found that Sangeet Roy had posted six images on October 13, 2019.

রথবাড়ি

Posted by সঙ্গীত রায় on Sunday, 13 October 2019

Newschecker had earlier fact-checked these images. They are not from Uttar Pradesh, Chattisgarh or Bihar but from West Bengal.

About the Author

She specializes in information verification, examining mis/disinformation, social media monitoring and platform accountability. Her aim is to make the internet a safer place and enable people to become informed social media users. She has been a part of Alt News since 2018.