A video clip of a leopard crossing a road is going viral on social media with claims that this took place near Kasu Brahmananda Reddy (KBR) park in Hyderabad. The park, located in Jubilee Hills, is in the heart of the city and the viral video has triggered panic amid the lockdown. This claim is fake.
As people stay indoors adhering to lockdown, a lot of fake messages are doing the rounds on social media like Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. This is one such message.
The video is old and has been reshared with a fake claim that the leopard was spotted crossing the road near the Basavatarakam Indo American Cancer Hospital & Research Institute.
A simple search on YouTube shows that these visuals are from the temple town Tirumala in Andhra Pradesh. The dateline in the top left corner of the video shows that it was recorded on April 18, 2020, at 3.12 am.
The Banjara Hills police also stated that no such incident took place in the city and appealed to people not to believe in such rumours.
The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) had shut the hill shrine for devotees on March 20 for a week, after a lockdown was announced in Andhra Pradesh in the wake of COVID-19. Authorities later extended it after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on March 24. All rituals are being conducted daily by the priests as usual at the hill temple.
With no devotees on the roads, many animals like bears and deers have been spotted on the ghat roads as the temple is located in the Seshachalam forest, which is home to a wild variety of wildlife.
Watch the video below.