A 4.0 magnitude earthquake with its epicentre near Dhaula Kuan shook Delhi at 5:36 am on February 17. Within hours, social media users and media organizations shared a CCTV clip claiming it to be a terrifying video of the tremors.
NDTV shared this video on X (formerly Twitter) and said that the tremors were so strong that the ground kept shaking for several seconds. This tweet was later deleted but its archived version can be accessed here.
Zee News Hindi ran the same CCTV footage as scenes from the Delhi earthquake. (Archived link)
Media houses like Lokmat Times, Jansatta, English Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar used the same video or its screengrab in their reports on the Delhi earthquake. These reports include a tweet by X user @mooniesssoobin in which he described it as a CCTV video of his house. (Archived link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5)
Dainik Bhaskar journalists Manish Mishra and Shailesh Verma also shared this video on X claiming it to be the Delhi earthquake incident. (Archived link 1, link 2)
Nagaland satellite channel NL TV and Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika’s official handle shared the clip on Instagram as footage of the Delhi earthquake. (Archived link 1, link 2)
Fact Check
We observed that the viral CCTV clip had a date and time clearly mentioned on the top right corner of the footage: February 15, 2025 and 22:48.18 hours. According to the National Center for Seismology, the earthquake in Delhi occurred on February 17, 2025 at 05:36 hours. (Archived link)
We performed a reverse image search of the key frames of the viral CCTV video and found a post by Pakistani X user Muhammad Abdullah Hashmi. This post dated February 16 has the hashtag Islamabad mentioned and the user has described it as a video taken from his house.
Just Look at the Blast and Wave it was something else still thinking about it
My Home CCTV video #earthquake #Islamabad pic.twitter.com/vpnTNZyad4— Muhammad Abdullah Hashmi (@PhantomriderxX) February 15, 2025
Upon further investigation, we also came across a video report by Pakistani YouTube channel Samaa TV dated February 15, 2025. According to the report, earthquake tremors were felt in Pakistan’s Rawalpindi and Islamabad at 10:48 pm on February 15, 2025.
To sum up, CCTV footage of an earthquake in Pakistan on February 15 was shared and telecast by the India media as visuals of the tremors in Delhi on February 17 without any kind of verification. It was particularly bizarre because the footage had the date and time mentioned on it, which did not stop the outlets from using it falsely in their bulletins or social media posts.
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