Fact Check: Cyclone Ditwah floods Chennai roads? No, video is from Kolkata

Hyderabad: A weakened but nearly stationary remnant of Cyclone Ditwah hovered just off the north Tamil Nadu coast on Tuesday, bringing another round of heavy rain to Chennai and neighbouring districts.

Amid these weather updates, a video showing a waterlogged road with cars partially submerged is being widely shared online with the claim that it captures the impact of Cyclone Ditwah in Chennai.

An Instagram user posted the clip with the caption, “Ditwah cyclone in Chennai.” (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The viral video is not from Chennai but from Kolkata.

Location of the video

We tried to find the location of the video using the shops in the viral clip.

We performed a reverse image search of the key frames from the footage. This led us to an image on Shutterstock showing the ‘Golden Meat Shop’ in Kolkata, uploaded in October 2025. The shopfront and surrounding buildings matched the visuals in the viral clip.

Following this, we geolocated two establishments visible in the video: ‘Royal Indian Restaurant’ and ‘Golden Meat.’

Both appear in Google Street View at Beck Bagan, Ballygunge, Kolkata, West Bengal. The nearby buildings with arches and overhanging balconies, road layout and signage are identical to those in the viral footage.

A side-by-side comparison clearly confirms that the location is Kolkata and not Chennai.

Further, while checking for earlier uploads, we found the same video posted on a Facebook page named Kais Kalim on September 25, weeks before Cyclone Ditwah formed in November 2025. The caption described the scene as from Kolkata.

Since the video predates Cyclone Ditwah and is geolocated to Kolkata, it cannot show flooding caused by the cyclone’s effects in Chennai.

The viral video does not show Cyclone Ditwah’s impact in Chennai. It is older footage from Kolkata. Therefore, the claim is false.