Gold hunting video at river shore in Haridwar exposed as fake

Claim

A viral video shows how to unearth gold, silver, and coins after the Ganges’ water subsides from the river shore in Haridwar.

Link

Fact Check

To verify the video, DFRAC did a reverse image search of a keyframe from the video. This led us to a YouTube video. It was uploaded on 23 October 2024 on a YouTube channel, named The Social Junction. This video has garnered over 1 million on YouTube ever since. This is a 10-minute, 34-second long video.

A YouTube video posted by 'The Social Junction' claims that gold and treasure can be found along the dried banks of the Ganga River. The video thumbnail shows a man using a metal detector and a pan to search for valuables in the sand. The video title in Hindi reads, 'गंगा नदी के सूखने पर सोना कैसे निकालते हैं, देखिए' (See how gold is extracted when the Ganga River dries up). The English subtitle states, 'Gold hunting treasure found in Ganga River wow😱.' The video has over 1.7 million views as of October 23, 2024. The channel has 2.57 million subscribers. However, fact-checking sources indicate that the video is scripted and does not provide genuine information about finding gold in the river.

Link

We saw the ‘About’ section of this YouTube channel which mentioned that they make scripted funny videos for entertainment purposes.

About section

They have posted many such videos where a person searches for gold or coins on a river shore/delta area. Here, in two separate videos, a person has mentioned searching for coins and gold in Haridwar.