Indian Minister Shared A Modified Video Of The Country’s Fastest Train

Aadhya Khatri - Feb 13, 2019

Indian Minister of Railways shared a video which is modified to appear like the train runs twice as fast as it really does.

Fake news is in no way tolerable, but if the piece of information is shared by a well-known authority figure, it can outrage the public even more.

Piyush Goyal, Indian Minister of Railways, who has a record of promoting misleading information, is now being mocked by spreading a video of India’s fastest train. The problem is the footage had been doctored to speed up in an attempt to draw attention to its incoming debut.

In the next few days, the event that marks the operation of the Vande Bharat Express, the train in question, will welcome the presence of Indian PM Narendra Modi. It has successfully reached the speed of 180 kph (or 112 mph), and when it is finally ready to be commercialized, the train is projected to maintain a speed of 160 kph (99 mph). However, it seems like Goyal or his people do not think that the train meets their standards of magnificence.

After the video had been public on Twitter, Alt News quickly announced that it had been altered to run twice as fast as it actually does. They even compare what is believed to be the original clip with Goyal so that their readers can see the difference for themselves.

This mistake was spotted at the worst time possible when fake news has led to violence in India and the government’s use of misleading information.

The original clip which showed the train zoom out of a station was actually posted on the 20^th of December, 2018 on the channel of The Rail Mail. Abhishek Jaiswal, another Twitter user said that he was the real owner of the clip. He even included a YouTube link to verify his point.

This act from Goyal might be more forgivable if he and his team had not done the same thing in 2017 when he use a picture of a street in Russia to promote the government’s effort to use LED street lights.

Later that year, Goyal was under fire again after he used an image of Amnesty International to demonstrate the attempt to lower Indian coal import. There would not be a problem if the picture was not to show how the country was contravening human rights.