A 6-second clip, ostensibly CCTV footage, showing a man petting a tiger in the middle of an empty street and offering the animal some liquor he was holding, is being widely shared as an incident from Madhya Pradesh, where a drunk labourer mistook the tiger for a giant cat.
According to those sharing the video — the man, 52-year-old Raju Patel — was drunk and on his way back home after playing cards and allegedly mistook a tiger, which had wandered off from the nearby Pench Tiger Reserve, as a big cat. Users also claimed that the tiger, which was roaming the village for hours, created panic among residents. According to several users, the tiger was finally brought under control by forest officials, who drove the animal back into the woods with the help of tranquillizers. The fiasco turned Patel into a local legend, as the news of the bizarre encounter spread.
X user @808constituent posted the viral clip on October 23, 2025. At the time this article was written, the post had garnered more than 60,000 views. (Archive)
On October 4, 2025, in Pench, India, a surreal moment was captured on CCTV. The photo shows Raju Patel, a 52-year-old laborer, patting a tiger he mistook for a “big cat” after a late-night card game. Tipsy from homemade liquor, Raju stumbled onto a street where a sub-adult Bengal… pic.twitter.com/FXbZsGeawy
— Constituent 🇺🇸🌺🐦🕊️ 🕉️ (@808constituent) October 23, 2025
Greater Andhra News, a news portal covering Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, also shared the viral video on October 29, calling it a “bizzare encounter” shared through WhatsApp . (Archive)
This bizzare encounter story was shared on WhatsApp 😅😬😂 A really weird case from the area near the Pench Tiger Reserve India https://t.co/cYVi24vfCE On October 4, 2025, in Pench, India, a surreal moment was captured on CCTV. The photo shows Raju Patel, a 52-year-old laborer,… pic.twitter.com/hTuF40eYUq
— RevaliTheBerner (@RussianBerner) October 28, 2025
Several other users, such as @kiranpatel1977, @RussianBerner, and others also circulated the claim. (Archives 1, 2)
An Instagram user named Riddhi Ranthambore Safari also shared the clip.
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Fact Check
To verify the authenticity of the claims, we first checked if the event was corroborated by any reputed news outlet or local forest authorities, but could find none.
The official X handle of Pench Tiger Reserve did not post about the alleged incident either.
On closer inspection, we noticed several visual discrepancies in the viral clip, which indicate that the video may have been artificially generated. For instance, as the man pets the tiger, the neck of the liquor bottle diminishes in size and is then restored to its original size. Moreover, in the background, the movement of two people, sitting on the porch of the house, appears distorted, another characteristic feature of such artificially generated clips. Screenshots below:
Alt News tried contacting the Pench Tiger Reserve, but our calls went unanswered. A report published by The Sootr, on October 29, quoting the deputy director of the reserve, Rajneesh Singh, dismissed the video and said it was not from Pench. He also pointed out the impossibility of such an encounter between a drunk man and a wild animal.
Based on this, Alt News was able to conclude that the viral clip is likely AI-generated. Although sightings of tigers are not entirely rare in the vicinity of the tiger reserve, no official statement records a tiger going missing on October 4 from Pench. The bizarre encounter between the tiger and the drunk man, it would seem, was artificially created and not a real event. Several such CCTV footage-like videos made using AI showing animals have been viral on social media lately.
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