Video from Tibet viral as car hit by boulder in Amboli Ghat, Maharashtra

A video is viral on social media claiming that it shows a car being hit by a boulder in Amboli Ghat. There are variants of the claim wherein the location of the crash changes. A WhatsApp forward claims that it happened in Amboli Ghat (Goa), a Twitter user posted it saying that it happened in Amboli Ghat, Belgaum and on Facebook, a user posted it with the message – “Amboli Ghat (way to Goa)”.

Nature can be very dangerous at times!
Amboli Ghat, Belgaum.#nature #dangerous #lucky #highway #ACCIDENT pic.twitter.com/2hnH9KTehk

— Syed Aftab Hussain (@aftab_m) July 2, 2019

Fact-check

A simple search on Google told us that Amboli Ghat is in Kegad, Maharashtra which is about 1 hour 45 minutes away from Belgaum, Karnataka, and is about 3 hours away from Goa.

Alt News used InVid to break down the video into multiple frames and then performed a reverse image search of one of the frames on Yandex. This led us to a CGTN (China Global Television Network) video posted on YouTube. The description of the video says that the incident happened in the Autonomous Region of Tibet in SW China on October 3, 2018. It further says that “according to the local police, the incident was an act of nature and nobody was seriously injured.”

Using this information, Alt News did a keyword search on Google. This led us to other news articles and videos by Daily Mail, The Weather Channel and Newsflare, that corroborate CGTN’s report.

The article published by Daily Mail provides some more details. It states that the car was travelling on G318, one of the longest Chinese National Highways, running from Shanghai to Tibet Autonomous Region. “Dashcam footage of the incident on October 3 shows a massive boulder smashing into an SUV travelling in the opposite lane after tumbling down the roadside hill in Bome county in Tibet,” per the report.

This video is currently viral in the Indian social media ecosystem claiming that the incident occurred in Amboli Ghat, Maharashtra. However, the video is actually of an incident which took place on October 3, 2018, on G318, one of China’s National Highways.