India’s creaking rail network has seen a string of disasters over the years but dramatic footage of a train pile-up was not filmed in the country’s southern Chennai megacity in December 2024, contrary to rumours on Facebook and Instagram. The incident described in the posts was made-up, Indian authorities told AFP, and the video in fact showed a deadly crash in Chile in June 2024.
“Vande Bharat train met with accident,” read a Hindi-language Facebook post that shared the video on January 1, referring to the state-operated multi-city rail service.
The footage shows a dramatic train pile-up, with one carriage wedged atop another compartment.
Hindi text overlaid on the clip says: “Vande Bharat Express met with an accident in Chennai on December 29, 2024, at 2 AM.”
Screenshot of the false post taken on January 5, 2025
The video made the rounds in similar posts on Instagram and Facebook.
India has one of the world’s largest rail networks and has seen several disasters over the years (archived link).
The worst occurred in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge in Bihar state, killing an estimated 800 people.
Nearly 300 people were killed in a three-train collision in Odisha state in June 2023, when a packed passenger train was mistakenly diverted onto a loop line and slammed into a stationary goods train loaded with iron ore.
The circulating posts, however, were baseless according to India’s rail authority.
“The Vande Bharat train has never met with an accident in Chennai,” a spokesman for Southern Railway told AFP on January 15. “This is completely false news.”
Chile disaster
A reverse image search of the video on Google found similar footage in a report about a train collision in Chile.
AFP posted the clip on June 20 in a YouTube video titled: “Railway collision in Chile kills two people” (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in false social media posts (left) and AFP’s video (right).Â
Screenshot comparison of the video shared in false social media posts (left) and AFP’s video (right)
Two people died and nine were injured in the head-on collision between a freight train and an empty locomotive carrying out test runs on the outskirts of the capital Santiago, AFP reported(archived link).
The collision claimed the lives of the freight train’s driver and his assistant.
The freight train is owned by the private Pacific Railways (Fepasa) company while the locomotive belonged to the state railway company EFE, the report added.
The Fepasa logo is clearly visible at the 36-second mark of the AFP video, as shown in the screenshot below:
