Amid the outcry over the Telangana government’s clearance drive of the Kancha Gachibowli forested land, near the University of Hyderabad (UoH), social media was rife with images and videos showing animals hurt or suffering. Among the visuals that went viral was one of an elephant with an injury on its trunk, one of an enraged tusker trying to topple a bulldozer, and another showing peacocks and deer being chased by earthmovers. Users sharing these claimed it showed the plight of the poor animals who were suffering because of political decisions to raze down the biodiversity-rich forest in Kancha Gachibowli.
For context, in February this year, the Congress-ruled Telangana government, led by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, decided to auction off 400 acres of forest land next to the university to build IT parks. The location is believed to have prime real estate potential, and the government argues the “development” would bring in a lot of investment and jobs.
On March 30, earthmovers were brought in and clearance of the land began, triggering a massive wave of protests by UoH students in which 53 were detained and two arrested and sent to judicial custody. Several people were also injured. With the situation escalating, two Public Interest Litigations (PILs) were filed before the Telangana High Court. On April 2, the court issued an interim order directing the government to stop the forest clearing activities until the next hearing. The following day, April 3, the Supreme Court also intervened. Taking suo moto cognisance of the matter, it sought an explanation from the Telangana administration on why it was clearing the land with such urgency. The apex court issued a directive to stop the “alarming deforestation activities” until further notice and has asked a central empowered committee to examine the site and submit a report by April 16.
In this story, we will examine three viral visuals—two separate videos with elephants and an image showing deer and peacocks running from bulldozers. Alt News has already fact checked one viral video showing burnt carcasses of animals, which social users claimed was from Telangana but turned out to be from a fire in Uttar Pradesh.
Visual 1:
The first viral video is a 10-second clip showing an elephant with a hole in its trunk. Those sharing this video claimed that the animal was hit and injured by the Telangana government’s bulldozer. Users criticised the government for not arranging any medical care for the elephant.
X account @umanngjain shared this clip on April 7 with a Hindi caption that translates to: “The Congress government in Telangana doesn’t even have a proper veterinarian to treat this injured elephant that was hurt by a government JCB 😤 @peta Where have you all gone silent?? #SaveHCUBioDiversity”.
At the time of this article being written, the post garnered over 280,000 views and was reshared about 6,900 times. (Archive)
Several others also shared the video with similar captions. Below are a few instances.
Visual 2:
The second viral video shows an elephant clashing with a bulldozer and attempting to topple it. Among those who shared it was X user @mukesh1275, who, going by his bio, is the State Editor at Dainik Bhaskar from Rajasthan.
The shared clip also had an audio in Punjabi that said the incident happened in Hyderabad and was shared with a Hindi caption, which translates to: “Hyderabad: A monster born of forest, wildlife, and politics. #Hyderabad #TelanganaForest”. (Archive)
हैदराबाद। जंगल, जानवर और राजनीति का दैत्य।#Hyderabad #telanganaforest pic.twitter.com/4AK9AG5QPH
— Mukesh Mathur (@mukesh1275) April 6, 2025
Many others amplified the video with similar claims. One of the social media users claimed that the “speechless elephant was trying to protect its territory and saving its children”. The user tagged Congress leader Rahul Gandhi asking what kind of development the Congress was aiming for.
Visual 3:
Several users also shared an image showing peacocks and deer in a forest with bulldozers in the background. with claims that the distressed animals were from the Kancha Gachibowli forest area.
The image was also used in a photo gallery published by Zee News Marathi on April 3 with the caption: “You won’t be able to hold back your tears after seeing this photo. Find out what exactly happened…”
Kasireddy Sindhu Reddy, state president of BJP’s youth wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, Telangana, also shared the above-mentioned image on Instagram with the hashtags “#savehcubiodiversity #savehcu #savenvironment #congressfailstelangana #corruptcongress”. The post received over 100,000 likes.
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This image was quite viral on social media. Below are a few instances.
Fact Check
Visual 1:
We broke down the first clip into several keyframes and ran a reverse image search on some of them along with relevant keywords. This led us to multiple reports and videos explaining the elephant’s special conditions. One of these was a blog post from 2021 titled “An Extraordinary Elephant” by a South African luxury ecotourism and conservation initiative called Singita that featured an image of the same elephant. The article said that the elephant, named Rhandzekile, was born with an abnormality—a hole in her forehead—but is living a normal life and raising a calf in the Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa.
We came across several other reports on Rhandzekile that talk about how she lives and how her survival was considered a miracle by medical professionals.
Thus, the elephant shown in the viral video is from South Africa, many miles away from Telangana and the state government’s forest-clearing activities, and the hole in her forehead is not owing to human abuse but a birth abnormality.
Visual 2:
For the second clip too, we ran a reverse image search on some of the keyframes from the viral video and came across several news reports that featured screengrabs identical to the clip. One of these reports, by NDTV, from February 6, said the screenshots were from a video of an incident in the Damdin area of Jalpaiguri, West Bengal where a wild elephant attacked an excavator after being provoked by locals.
Another report by The Hindu from February 5 said that locals, including a JCB driver poked and chased the tusker, prompting the animal to retaliate by charging at the individuals nearby, the excavator and a watchtower. It added that the JCB driver was arrested for attacking the elephant with a crane.
This proves, this clip, from West Bengal, is also unrelated to activities in Kancha Gachibowli.
Visual 3:
At the outset, we noticed several discrepancies in the viral image.
First, one can only see the shadows of the two peacocks in front, not those of other animals. Two, the peacock on the extreme left (marked by a red circle) does not have the long and bright green and blue back feathers. Its wings too do not do not resemble those of a peacock. For comparison, look at the peacock on the right side in front.
Three, the bodily structures of the birds at the back, which seem like peacocks, are disfigured. It is not clear which birds these are. These parts of the image look heavily distorted compared to the almost perfect birds seen in front, despite the distance between them not being too much.
Four, two of the deer on the left almost seem to merge (marked by a red rectangle). Lastly, the hind legs of two deer, one in the middle and one the right, seem to be floating in the air (marked by red circles).
We also ran the image through an AI-generated content detector tool, Hive Moderation, which showed a 99.6% probability that the image was AI-generated.
Based on these reasons, we were able to conclude that this is not an actual photo of animals suffering in Kancha Ghachibowli but an AI-generated image.
To sum up, all three visuals Alt News analysed do not have anything to do with the forest land being cleared near the University of Hyderabad in Telangana. Two of the viral videos featuring elephants are from South Africa and West Bengal, respectively, and were shared out of context. The viral image of animals and JCB vehicles in the background was generated using artificial intelligence.
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