A distressing video from India showing a newborn baby being rescued after being buried alive is being shared with the false claim that the video is from Morocco after the deadly earthquake that hit the country last week.
BOOM found that the video is from Kanpur Dehat district, Uttar Pradesh, where villagers found a baby buried underground.
Morocco's High Atlas Mountains were hit by a deadly 6.8-magnitude earthquake on September 8, claiming the lives of more than 2,900 people and injuring at least 5,600 others, according to officials. The earthquake is considered to be the deadliest the country has witnessed since 1960.
A caption on X (formerly Twitter) reads, "Here, a new born baby is dug out of the debris after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake devastates Morocco. Pray for this child 🙏🏽 #MoroccoEarthquake #Morocco #PrayForThisChild #BlackTwitter."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The video is also being shared on Facebook with the text, "After many hours of earthquake, they heard the crying sound, it was a newborn baby. Ya Allah have Marcy on us."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video is from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur Dehat district where a newborn was buried alive.
We heard some people speaking Hindi in the video and taking a hint from that we ran a keyword search for similar incidents in India. This led us to a report published by The Times of India on September 10, 2023 with the headline, 'Newborn baby boy who was buried alive rescued by farmer couple.' According to the report, a husband-wife farmer duo and a few other villagers heard the cries of a baby in Pulandar village, located in the Kanpur Dehat district. It was then that they found out the baby was buried and rescued it.
We also ran a keyword search in Hindi and found reports by several news outlets including Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala who carried a report about the incident. The visuals from the Dainik Bhaskar report matched the visuals in the viral video.
A longer version of the viral video uploaded by journalist Mohammad Imran can be seen here. In the video, some villagers are seen wrapping the baby in a yellow cloth.
This report by Navbharat Times published on September 10, 2023 said that the district hospital's Chief Medical Officer, Dr AK Singh, declared the baby healthy.
Amar Ujala in its report quoted the community health centre's Dr Vikas Kumar who explained how the baby was born merely 7-8 hours before he had been buried and had difficulty breathing when he was brought in. He also added that oxygen had been administered to the newborn.
BOOM reached out to Station House Officer (SHO) Moosanagar, Akhilesh Jaiswal, who confirmed that the incident in the viral video is from Pulandar village in Kanpur Dehat district. SHO Jaiswal added that a couple - Rajesh and Reshma, residents of Pulandar village, had found the baby.
"Investigation is currently underway," Jaiswal said when asked who had buried the child.
We also found updates posted by Kanpur Dehat's official X handle on September 9. In the statement, Area Officer of Bhognipur, the town in which Pulandar is located, informed that the baby was taken to the CHC and was under the care of doctors.
