Misinformation often circulates about major road accidents online, with social media users frequently sharing unrelated images. In a recent case, photos of a fatal bus accident in India were repeatedly shared in Facebook posts about an imagined tragedy in neighboring Bangladesh. AFP has found that reports have circulated of an accident in a Himalayan ravine that has killed at least 36 people and injured several others.

“20 people, including children, died in a tragic accident when a bus plunged into a gorge at Khagrachari,” read a Bengali-language caption on Facebook. post distributed on November 5, 2024.

Khagrachari is a town in the hilly region of south-eastern Bangladesh, which previously made headlines for road accidents in June and April this year (archived links Here and Here).

The post – shared over 700 times –included four photos of people looking at the wreckage of a damaged bus on a hill.

Part of the post’s caption also read: “The bus had 45 passengers on board. The death toll could rise. Many passengers are still trapped in the bus and a rescue operation is underway.”

The photos, which AFP found came from media reports about a bus accident in India, were shared alongside a similar false claim elsewhere on Facebook. Here and Here.

There were no official reports of such fatal bus accident in Khagrachari from November 13, 2024.

Accident in India

Reverse image searches found the photos in various media reports, including Here and Here about an accident on November 4, 2024 in the state of Uttarakhand in northwestern India (archived links Here and Here).

Indian news agency ANI published three of the photos Here, Here and Here (archived links Here, Here and Here).

On November 4, one of the photos was captioned “23 dead as bus falls into Almora gorge in Uttarakhand. (Photo/ANI).”

The fourth photo was published in a report by the Press Trust of India (PTI) on the same accident (archived Here).

Below is a screenshot comparison between the compilation of images from the fake post (left) and the photos published by ANI and PTI (right):

An Indian bus plunged into a deep gorge in the Almora district of northwestern Uttarakhand state on November 4, killing at least 36 passengers and injuring several others, AFP reported (archived link).

Photos from the Uttarakhand Information and Public Relations Department also showed a similar scene below:

A journalist from AFP’s New Delhi bureau identified Hindi text on the trunk of the vehicle — Gangotri and Yamunotri — referring to religious pilgrimage sites in Uttarakhand.

The district authorities have published this the list of victims of the accident of November 4, 2024 which gave the coordinates of the accident in the Marchula area of ​​the Almora district (archived link).

The location in the photos generally corresponds to this roadside in Marchula on Google Street View (archived link).