Image of 2018 landslide in Peru shared as recent landslide in Joshimath, Uttrakhand

Hyderabad: An image of a massive landslide has gone viral on social media with the claim that it is one of the landslides that recently occurred in Joshimath, Uttarakhand.

Apparently, Joshimath and many other towns in the Himalayas are geologically prone to subsidence.

Amid the recent reports of landslides in many locations in the northern Himalaya, an unrelated image showing a massive landslide taking away a big chunk of a mountain is doing the rounds on social media claiming it is one of the recent landslides in Joshimath.

The image is accompanied by a text that reads, “600 families of Uttarakhand’s sinking Joshimath to be shifted to safer locations, Plea in SC to declare it ‘nationAal disaster’ (sic).” It further adds, “Construction works around hill halted, PMO takes charge.”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that not only is the photo not recent, it is not even from India.

On performing a simple reverse image search, we found the same image on a blog post written by Dave Petley, the vice-chancellor of the University of Hull, the United Kingdom. It is titled “Llusco, Peru: a dramatic landslide has destroyed 100 houses” and was published in March 2018.

Petley has also included drone footage of the landslide taken by Fameco in his post. (Click here to view the videos.)

Taking this as a cue, we ran a keyword search and found a tweet by the official Twitter handle of Peru’s ministry of defence. It tweeted the image on 16 March 2018. The Spanish caption translates to, “Minister of Defense, Jorge Kisic, together with the regional governor of Cusco, @EdwinLiconaGRC, carries out an inspection overflight in the area affected by landslides in the district of Llusco, #Cusco.”

From this, it is evident that the viral image is neither from Joshimath, Uttarakhand nor is it a recent one. It is an image that dates back to 2018 and shows a landslide in Peru.

Hence, the claim is false.