A video is viral showing a man picking up soiled US dollar notes from the ground while remarking that the money earned by people in Punjab was no longer of any use to the state. While sharing the video, social media users claim that US dollar bills buried underground in a family’s home in Punjab had been damaged in the floods.
Numerous districts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir have been affected by heavy rains and flooding in North India. So far, 43 people have died in Punjab and floodwater has entered 1,902 villages in 23 districts, with crops like paddy, maize, sugarcane and cotton over vast stretches of farmland severely affected.
Among those who shared the video is Shivam Dixit, deputy editor of RSS magazine Panchjanya. He posted the video on X and claimed, “A family in Punjab had buried American dollar notes on their land, which are now completely destroyed after the floods. The question is, where did this money come from?”
पंजाब में एक परिवार ने अपनी ज़मीन में अमेरिकी डॉलर गाड़ रखे थे, जो अब बाढ़ के बाद पूरी तरह से बर्बाद हो गए हैं।
सवाल यह है कि ये पैसे कहाँ से आए.?
कबूतरबाज़ी..?
ख़ली$तानी कनेक्शन..?
कथित किसान विरोध प्रदर्शन..?
या ‘कुदरती’ तोहफ़ा..? pic.twitter.com/B2K7YdaVeq— Shivam Dixit (@ShivamdixitInd) September 3, 2025
Journalist Arvind Chotia and a number of Right-wing X users, including Geeta Patel, Baba Banaras and Amitabh Chaudhary among others, amplified the claim. Assam, the readers should note, is a non-BJP-ruled state.
Alt News has found Shivam Dixit, Arvind Chotia, Geeta Patel, Baba Benaras, and Amitabh Chaudhary sharing misinformation and communal propaganda multiple times in the past.
Fact Check
A reverse image search using a few frames taken from the viral video led us to the same video posted on a YouTube channel called ShayComposed on July 31, 2025. However, it contained a different audio than the one used in the viral clip. Furthermore, the caption states that a woman found over $600,000 buried in the ground and started recording. Additionally, we noticed the TikTok logo along with the username “@ifound504” in the video.
Alt News searched for the TikTok user @ifound504 using a VPN. The account, belonging to Galaxy Restore, uploaded the video on July 29 of this year with the caption “A pile of dollars, $690,000.” The location mentioned is Los Angeles in the United States.
Apart from this, we also found the same video uploaded on Galaxy Restore’s Facebook page on July 29 with the caption “$690,000 found“. When we searched the TikTok and Facebook pages of Galaxy Restore, we found many other similar videos of jewellery, money, and mobile phones being recovered which were covered in mud, sludge or garbage.
In other words, the video has been available on social media platforms since at least July 29, 2025, and it has no connection to the recent floods in Punjab. However, a fake narrative is being circulated online by stitching a different audio with the visuals.
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