Karnataka

Watched the video of 11 'leopards' crossing the road? It did not happen in Bengaluru

Written by : TNM Staff

A video of a group of 'leopards' crossing a road at night, while commuters stop and wait for them to pass by, is the latest video the internet seems to be in love with, and it is being circulated as an incident which happened in Bengaluru. 

The one minute-twenty-one-second video uploaded on YouTube, however, shows eleven lions, not leopards, and it did not happen in Bengaluru, but Gujarat.

A pride of lions can be seen walking up to the divider in the middle of the road, and after pausing there for a few minutes, cross over to the other side. And as they do, four more lions join them. 

And while this is happening, one can hear members of a family, who are recording the episode, expressing awe at the rare sight. They can be heard speaking to each other in Hindi, one person even counting the number of animals, as a Hindi song plays in the background. 

Half-way through the video, two men on a bike stop at a distance from the lions. After the lions have crossed over to the other side, the two men can be seen alighting from their bike and trying to shoot a video. 

While some forwards claim that the incident occurred on NICE road in Bengaluru, there are others who propagate that the "crossing" happened between Kanakapura and Bannerghatta road. 

But, before you fall into the endless cycle of forwarding fake messages on social media, a quick internet search would throw innumerable results that show that the story is a cooked-up tale. 

The video is not from Bengaluru, but from Gujarat and was telecasted by several media channels at the time it happened. The three-week old video is from Pipavav-Rajula highway in Gujarat, the news agency ANI reported about it on April 16 this year. 

#WATCH Traffic halts on Pipavav-Rajula highway in Gujarat as pride of lions cross the road. pic.twitter.com/qvLF1xZsbd

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