Old video of cable car accident falsely linked to new system in India’s Uttar Pradesh
India’s first urban cable car system began trial runs in October, which is built in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home constituency, Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh. Social media users have shared a clip with a false claim it showed an accident at the system’s debut trip. But the journalist who covered the actual event shown in the video told AFP it was filmed in Dongargarh in central India in April.
“Modi built a four-kilometre (2.4-mile) ropeway in Varanasi at a cost of eight billion rupees ($95 million). The carriage broke and fell down during its debut trip — and interestingly, a BJP leader was also in it,” reads a Hindi-language Facebook post on October 1, 2025, referring to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The 26-second video shows a cable car setting off before cutting to a scene of a crashed gondola and injured passengers.
Screenshot of the false Facebook post captured on October 8, 2025, with a red X added by AFP
The clip appeared with similar claims on Instagram and X as trial runs of India’s first urban public transport ropeway began in Varanasi on October 2, the ANI news agency reported (archived link).
Aimed at improving the city’s urban mobility, the 3.8-kilometre (2.36-mile) corridor will use 148 gondolas to transport up to 100,000 passengers a day.
But the video actually shows a cable car accident in the neighbouring Chhattisgarh state.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes found the same video uploaded on Instagram on April 25, 2025 (archived link).
The post captioned in Hindi reads in part: “Ropeway trolley broke in Dongargarh, BJP leader narrowly escaped, was brought to Rajnandgaon Sanjeevani Hospital.”
Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh is located 660 kilometres (410 miles) from Varanasi.
Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the Instagram video
The caption credits the report to Monaj Dewangan, a reporter with the local news outlet Correct News CG, who told AFP the footage was filmed in Chhattisgarh.
“The ropeway suddenly crashed. The BJP leader, onboard along with other passengers, sustained injuries. The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital,” he said on October 8, 2025.
Local media outlets reporting the accident said a gondola carrying devotees to the Bamleshwari temple in Dongargarh detached from the cable and fell to the ground, injuring some BJP leaders among others (archived here, here and here).
ANI published a clip on October 3 on a trial run on the Varanasi cable car system, which shows gondolas bearing a different livery from those seen in the false video (archived link).
Uttar Pradesh police also dismissed the false claim in a post on its X account (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked misinformation linked to Modi here.
