News channels show old, unrelated video as clip of cheetah brought to India from Namibia

On September 17, cheetahs brought from Namibia were released at the Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Since then, social media users and media outlets have been circulating a video of a cheetah describing it as one of the animals from Namibia that Prime Minister Narendra Modi released at the Kuno National Park.

The Times Now news channel aired the visual in one of its programmes, claiming that this was the first footage of the cheetahs as they returned to India 70 years later. (Archived link)

Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav shared the video of the cheetah and wrote, “Everyone was waiting for its roar, but it turned out to be more like a cat.” (Archived link)

सबको इंतज़ार था दहाड़ का… पर ये तो निकला बिल्ली मौसी के परिवार का. pic.twitter.com/O6CcygRfpg

— Akhilesh Yadav (@yadavakhilesh) September 17, 2022

Dainik Bhaskar also ran the video as footage of cheetahs brought from Namibia. (Archived link)

Similarly, Congress leader and MLA Virendra Choudhary, News18 journalist Priyanka Kandpal, The Economic Times, The Lallantop, The Quint, The Quint Hindi, News18, Latestly, Live Hindustan, etc. also amplified this clip as the introduction of cheetahs to India.

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Fact-check

Alt News performed a keyword search on YouTube. This led us to the original video uploaded on a channel named Adventure with Creature on February 14, 2022. This means that the video is not recent at all.

We also performed a reverse image search using a frame taken from this video, and found the original video uploaded on November 29, 2021 on a YouTube channel named The Wildcat Sanctuary.

Alt News cannot confirm how old this video is and where it is from. At the same time, it is clear that the clip is at least nine-month old and has nothing to do with the group of cheetahs that were recently brought to India from Namibia.

To sum it up, a number of politicians and media outlets shared an old video of a cheetah, claiming that it was the first visual of the cheetahs recently brought to India from Namibia.