Misinformation often circulates about major road accidents online, with social media users frequently sharing unrelated imagery. In a recent case, photos of a deadly bus crash in India were shared repeatedly in Facebook posts about an imagined tragedy in neighbouring Bangladesh. AFP found they have circulated in reports about an accident in a Himalayan ravine that killed at least 36 people and injured several others.
“20 people, including children, died in a tragic accident as a bus plunged into a gorge at Khagrachari,” read a Bengali-language caption in a Facebook post shared on November 5, 2024.
Khagrachari is a city in the southeastern hilly region of Bangladesh that has previously made the headlines for road accidents in June and April this year (archived links here and here).
The post—shared more than 700 times—included four photos of people looking at the wreckage of a damaged bus on a hillside.
Part of the post’s caption also read, “The bus had 45 passengers on board. The number of deaths may rise. Many passengers are still stuck inside the bus and an operation is going on to rescue them.”
A screenshot of the false Facebook post
The photos, which AFP found originated in media reports about a bus crash in India, were shared alongside a similar false claim elsewhere on Facebook here and here.
There have been no official reports about such a deadly bus accident in Khagrachari as of November 13, 2024.
India accident
Reverse image searches found the photos in different media reports including here and here about an accident on November 4, 2024 in the northwestern Indian state of Uttarakhand (archived links here and here).
Indian news agency ANI published three of the photos here, here and here (archived links here, here and here).
It captioned one of the photos on November 4 with “23 dead as bus falls into gorge in Uttarakhand’s Almora. (Photo/ANI).”
The fourth photo was published in a report by the Press Trust of India (PTI) about the same accident (archived here).
Below is a screenshot comparison between the image compilation in the false post (left) and the photos published by ANI and the PTI (right):
Screenshot comparison of the image compilation in the false post (left) and the photos published by ANI and the PTI (right)
A bus in India fell into a deep gorge in Almora district in the northwestern state of Uttarakhand on November 4, killing at least 36 passengers and injuring several others, AFP reported (archived link).
Photos from Uttarakhand’s Department of Information and Public Relations also showed a similar scene below:
Department of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) Uttarakhand
Department of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) Uttarakhand
A journalist in AFP’s New Delhi bureau identified Hindi-language text on the vehicle’s roof rack — Gangotri and Yamunotri — that refer to religious pilgrim sites in Uttarakhand.
District authorities published this list of the accident victims on November 4, 2024 which gave the coordinates of the crash in the Marchula area of Almora district (archived link).
The location in the photos generally corresponds with this roadside in Marchula on Google Street View (archived link).
