Fact Check: Video of crowded Pakistani market falsely shared as Muslims shopping for Eid in Hyderabad

A video is being circulated across different social media platforms with claims that citizens of Hyderabad recently thronged a local market, flouting the social distancing guidelines as set by the government.

Those sharing the clip asserted that people had gone out in huge numbers to Madina Market in the capital city of Telangana to shop for the upcoming festival of Eid, in spite of the ongoing nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

As the video gained traction, particularly on Twitter, social media users started targeting the people as well as the authorities of Hyderabad.

Here is the now-viral clip:

Later, the same video was passed off as scenes from the national capital. Ishita Yadav, parliament secretary to Varun Gandhi, took to Twitter to post the video and claimed it to be from Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi.

"Chandni Chowk, Delhi. Will Delhi be the new Bombay? These videos that are coming out are pretty scary," she wrote in the caption. However, she later deleted the tweet.

Check out the screenshot of her post:

The truth behind the clip

That social media has a knack of spreading misinformation is not a secret. Fact-checking website Boom has been able to confirm that the video is falsely claimed to be from Hyderabad's Madina Market. The clip was found to be from Anarkali Bazaar in Pakistan's Faisalabad.

As mentioned in the analysis by Boom, the video shows a board with Urdu text at exactly 13 seconds. When translated in English, the text reads Aini Shoes. A Google search for the title shows a store of the same name in Faisalabad. Furthermore, the official website of Aini Shoes has also listed its address as Anarkali Bazaar, Faisalabad.

Upon digging up further, it was discovered that several Pakistani users had shared the video on their Twitter handles, saying that it is from a Faisalabad market.

Here are those tweets:

Therefore, it is certainly safe to say that the people of Hyderabad did not violate any social distancing norms by stepping out in large numbers as the viral video is actually from our neighboring country.