While Mumbai is reeling under the pressure of intense flooding, a twitter user @iScrew who goes under the twitter name “TheAgeOfBananas”, decided to add further intensity to the matter by claiming that the Mumbai airport too has been completely flooded.
The user who has about 7,200 followers is pretty famous with the predominantly leftist crowd and is followed by personalities like controversial journalist Nidhi Razdan and Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi:
This was the tweet put out by “age of bananas”:
In the tweet above, the Banana guy claimed that Mumbai airport had been totally transformed into a sailing port and proceeded to blame PM Modi for it. This was the corresponding video contained in the tweet:
Under this video, a raincoat clad groundsman is seen standing in a flooded airport, while a car is cutting through the waterlogged water. As depicted by “age of bananas”, the scene correctly reminded of a seaplane harbour.
After this tweet, various twitter users like @attomeybharti noticed disparity in the claims made by the said:
https://twitter.com/attomeybharti/status/1016925844814684160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Following an investigation, he indeed found that the video was from a flooding which occurred in Mexico City international airport in 2017, and not the Mumbai airport as claimed by the “age of bananas”:
https://twitter.com/elwesomx/status/903083799755595776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
After the lie was caught, “Age of bananas” proceeded to delete his tweet and claimed that it was an inadvertent error. The user also alleged that he/she was threatened during the episode but put up a brave face to claim that he/she won’t be bogged down by intimidation.
Incidentally it isn’t the only time Indian airports have been maligned about not being able to manage heavy rains. We had reported how the PTI had spread a fake news when it used images of a flooded Chennai airport to claim that the Ahmedabad airport had become completely waterlogged.