Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely circulated on social media platforms, it was being claimed that the video showcased two Pakistani spies. The video went on to claim that the people seen were BSF soldiers, being caught from a train, over Rs 96 lakh were found with them. When the spies were searched, over Rs 96 crore were found in their home.
During the investigation, we found that the video is not recent and does not showcase Pakistani spies.
Claim:
X user Arun Kumar shared the video with the misleading claim.
Other users are also sharing the video with a similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation with a basic keyword search, we did not find any recent news reports about the incident. We then ran a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the viral video.
We found a similar video uploaded on YouTube over seven years ago.
We found a news report about the incident posted in the year 2018.
The report said: As many as 16 people, including a noted builder, were arrested by the Kanpur police in connection with the seizure of over Rs 96 crore in demonetised currency notes from the builder’s ancestral house in Swaroop Nagar here. Senior Superintendent of Police Akhilesh Kumar Meena said today that Rs 95 crore belonged to Anand Khatri, the builder, and over a dozen others owned the remaining amount.
We found more news reports about the incident.
We found a post by ANI UP/Uttarakhand on January 17, 2018.
The second image featured the man seen in the video.
Conclusion: A video from 2018 showing Kanpur police arresting a man after seizing over Rs 96 crore in demonetised currency from a builder’s house is now being shared online as recent. The viral video claiming to show two BSF soldiers, who were Pakistani spies, is false.
