Viral video of woman falling into sinkhole on ‘Indian road’ is actually from Brazil

What’s the claim?

A widely shared video on social media shows a woman in a red T-shirt walking on a road before falling into a sinkhole as the pavement collapses. Some users have claimed this incident occurred in Gujarat, India, citing it as evidence of the region's deteriorating infrastructure. Others have asserted that the video depicts the condition of the newly constructed 'Rampath' in Ayodhya, implying issues with recent development projects.

On X (formerly Twitter), one user shared the video with a Hindi caption that translates to: "A Gujarat company built 13 kilometers of Ayodhya's Rampath for just Rs 844 crore. The cost per kilometer is Rs 66 crore. The Gujarat company has squandered taxpayers' money." At the time of writing, this post had garnered over 156,000 views. Archived versions of similar posts can be found here, here, and here.

Other X users shared the same clip with a different Hindi caption: "This is a video from Gujarat. Remember the Gujarat model before driving on the road." Archived versions of these posts can be accessed here and here. 

Screenshot of claims made online. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the viral clip originates from neither Ayodhya nor Gujarat.

What we found

A reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video led us to a YouTube report by the Brazilian news network Jornal da Record (archived here), dated June 4, 2022. The English translation of the video title reads, "Camera captures moment when sidewalk gives way and woman falls into hole in Ceará." The viral clip's visuals can be seen at 0:06 seconds into the YouTube video.

The description of the video indicates that the incident occurred in Cascavel, in the metropolitan region of Fortaleza, Brazil. Although the area was marked with cones, the woman did not notice them. According to the city hall, heavy rains caused the ground to collapse, and construction work was ongoing at the time.

It's worth noting that the original video has been flipped horizontally in the viral clip.

Several Brazilian news networks covered this incident in June 2022. Additional reports can be found here, here, and here. Revista Fórum, a local news outlet, shared a screenshot of the incident and identified the woman as 48-year-old Maria Rosilene Almeida de Souza.

While recent waterlogging did cause road cave-ins at over 10 locations on the Rampath (the road leading to the Ram temple in Ayodhya), the video currently circulating is unrelated to these incidents.

The verdict

The video was captured in Cascavel, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Ceará. It does not depict an incident in India.