Video of jewellery shop robbery from Egypt shared as Kolhapur, Maharashtra

A video viral on social media is being shared by multiple individual users claiming that it depicts a jewellery shop robbery taking places in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. In the video, a man can be seen stabbing the staff behind the counter while two of his accomplices gather all the jewellery in a bag.

The video has been widely shared on Facebook, while a few users have also circulated it on Twitter.

Video actually of a jewellery shop robbery in Egypt

Alt News broke the video into multiple frames using InVid software and reverse-searched the images on Google. We found that the incident actually pertains to a jewellery shop robbery that took place in Marsa Matrouh, Egypt in May 2017. The theft and murder were reported by several Egyptian media outlets, including Al Arabiya.

“A source in Matrouh security department said that it had arrested one of the perpetrators, from the province of Al-Beheira, with 5 kg of stolen gold, a shotgun and knives. His accomplices managed to escape,” said the Al Arabiya report.

Recent social media claims suggest that a jewellery shop named ‘Mahalaxmi Jewellers’ in Kolhapur, Maharashtra was robbed. What we found is that a store of the same name was indeed robbed, however, the viral video does not depict this incident.

According to a November 2017 report in The Hindu, burglars had drilled a hole in the ceiling of Mahalaxmi Jewellers, a pawn shop in Kolathur, Chennai. The thieves stole nearly 3 kgs of jewellery. However, there were no reports of injuries to staff and the incident wasn’t recorded on CCTV as the burglars had stolen the recorder as well.

It is commonplace on social media for videos of unrelated incidents to be circulated as recent events. Any clips shared without attributing the information to a credible media source should not be believed before self-verification.