A video showing explosions near a farmland is being shared is being shared online, purportedly as an instance of violence in West Bengal's East Medinipur district.
BOOM found that these posts are false; the video is from Kerala and it shows fireworks being organised by Parakkat Sree Bhagavathy Temple at Kavasseri, in Palakkad district. A member of one of the committees in charge of organising the fireworks for the temple confirmed to BOOM that the video shows fireworks organised for the Kavaseri Pooram festival.
Bharatiya Janata Party National Secretary Sunil Deodhar shared the video on Twitter with a caption, which translates from Hindi as, "Look at West Bengal sitting on a powder keg. This scene of East Medinipur is horrifying. Mamta has no control over the state. There is no idea of law and order. Jungle Raj remains."
Click here to view the above tweet.
Many other users also followed suit and shared the exact same video and caption together on Twitter. View such posts here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search on Google using keyframes of the viral video, and came across the exact same video being shared on YouTube Shorts with the caption, "Kavassery Pooram Vedikkettu 🔥 | Palakkad Kavassery Vedikkettu at its best."
Taking cue from this, we performed a few relevant keyword searches and came across the website of the Parakkat Sree Bhagavathy Temple in Kavasseri, which organises the Kavasseri Pooram Festival every year.
We located the temple on Google Maps and looked through the user-uploaded videos and photos of the temple. We found the viral video being shared here as well.
BOOM spoke to the presidents of three different committees in charge of conducting the fireworks, and one of them confirmed to us that the video going viral is from Kavasseri Pooram festival. However, they were not able to provide the exact year the incident in the video took place.
