A staged video of a man being electrocuted while speaking on a phone that was being charged and drinking water simultaneously is viral on social media as a real incident.
The video appears to show an interface and logo similar to real time visuals of a CCTV camera and has a dateline of Monday, December 13, 2021, which indicates that the same was shot on the said date.
BOOM has debunked several such dramatized videos which were earlier viral as real incidents. Read here, here and here.
The footage, which looks like it has been culled out from a CCTV camera, shows a man entering a room and asking a woman to get a mobile phone charger. He then charges his phone and continues his conversation over the phone and works on his laptop simultaneously. Later, he plugs in the phone for charging and suddenly gets electrocuted and collapses while drinking water.
BOOM received the video via its WhatsApp helpline for verification with a text in Marathi that reads, "This is dangerous. Everyone please beware. When drinking water and mobile was put on charge...it looks like he received a huge shock to his brain. Extremely scary!
(Original text in Marathi: खतरनाक आहे हे.....प्रत्येकान काळजी घ्या. पाणी पित असताना आणि त्यात मोबाइल charging ला लावलेला..... जोरात मेंदूला शॉक लागलेला दिसतोय. खूप भयानक!!)
The video has been widely posted on Facebook with similar claims. See one such video below.
The same video was also tweeted by an IPS officer Rupin Sharma. Sharma captioned the video as, "Don't use phone with Charging." The tweet has since been deleted after netizens pointed out that the viral video is dramatized.
The tweet is archived here.
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Fact Check
BOOM was able to ascertain that the video is not a footage of a CCTV camera but a scripted performance. Several such videos with a similar layout have been debunked by BOOM earlier. Netizens also alerted Sharma by replying that the video is a staged one .
BOOM has debunked similar such videos which went viral from the verified page of one Hamsa Nandini and Sanjjanaa Galrani. While we were unable to trace the origin of this viral video, BOOM was able to spot similarities between the other debunked videos and the above viral one. Below is a comparison of the same.
The background music of the viral video is similar to videos which have already been debunked by BOOM. Even the logo of the CCTV camera interface which was posted in one of the videos from Galrani's page is similar to the viral video. See one such scripted video here.
These videos end with the same text: "Like and Share" logo that can be seen in the viral video too.
Below is a comparison between the appearances of the 'recording button', 'CM 2' and 'date line' in both the videos. It shows that the interface used is same for both.
This shows that a scripted video which shows a man being electrocuted while speaking on his charging phone and drinking water, has been falsely shared as an actual incident.
No news reports on electrocution of man while drinking water and speaking on phone
We ran a keyword search but did not find any news reports claiming that a man was electrocuted while drinking water and speaking on a charging phone. An incident from November, 2021, stated that a 22-year-old man died in Odisha after his mobile phone, which was being charged, exploded while he was sleeping.
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