‘Success of demonetisation?’ Video of kids flaunting old, demonetised notes not from Pakistan but Lucknow

by Prantik Ali

A video of two minor scrap dealers flaunting wads of currency notes is viral on social media. In the video, two men ask the kids if they can take some notes for themselves and the boys hand these over as if they are mere paper. Those sharing the video claim that demonetised Indian currency notes were found in Pakistan and this highlights Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “masterstroke”.

On November 8, 2016, Modi announced a controversial policy in a bid to target money laundering and push “black money” out of circulation. He announced that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes of the Mahatma Gandhi series would no longer be legal tender. For days after, people scrambled to withdraw money and deposit their existing cash with banks to avoid their notes going void. As a result, the poor with limited banking resources and structured finances suffered. Much of the notes in circulation were also returned to the Reserve Bank of India, questioning the efficacy of such a major overhaul. However, the viral video above is being used to imply that Modi’s policy helped track such “black money” in Pakistan.

On September 22, X user @SadhaMaanus shared the video, claiming that it illustrates the necessity of demonetisation. At the time of writing this, the post managed to rack up nearly 550,000 views. (Archive)

Several other X users, including @Sheetal2242, @mktyaggi and @Mahaveer_VJ also posted the clip with the same claim. (Archives: 1, 2, 3) 

Screenshots below:

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The video was also viral on Facebook with the same claim.

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Fact Check

To verify the authenticity of the video and claims, we broke down the video into key frames.

A reverse image search on one of these led us to this Instagram video, uploaded on December 27, 2024.

The video was of better resolution, which allowed us to run subsequent reverse image searches. This led us to another Instagram video, uploaded by a user named Brijesh Mishra on August 10, 2025.

In this, Brijesh Mishra appears in the video to clarify that he was the one who had recorded the original clip that went viral. He says that he met the two children near Aashiyana intersection in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

To be sure if this was true, we compared a screengrab from the viral video and the location mentioned by Mishra. We located Aashiyana intersection in Lucknow on Google Maps and found similarities.

We then went through Brijesh Mishra’s Instagram profile and found another video uploaded on January 2, where he is shown meeting the mother of the two children in the viral video. The mother reveals that they are from Assam and now based in Lucknow. They make a living out of collecting scrap material, she says. Mishra then entreats viewers not to spread fake news by alleging that the kids are from Pakistan or Uttarakhand.

We also came across this video, where Mishra appears with the two kids after the video went viral urging viewers to support them.

Thus we were able to conclude the viral clip is not from Pakistan as social media users claimed but from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. It depicts two children from Assam who moved with their families to Uttar Pradesh in search of a livelihood and came across discarded rolls of demonetised banknotes while picking scrap to sell. The video is being used with misleading claims to promote the 2016 demonetisation policy.

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