Amid the furore over the Reserve Bank of India’s decision to withdraw the ₹2,000 banknote from circulation, a video showing heaps of the high-value currency being recovered from a tyre has gone viral on social media.
Describing what is being shown in the clip, a Twitter post says ₹2,000 notes have started coming out in the open, and hails this as a move against black money.
Archived link here.
But a simple reverse image search revealed that the incident shown in the video dates back to 2019, and has nothing to do with the RBI’s recent move.
The Hindu traced the clip to a news report dated April 21, 2019, regarding the Income Tax Department’s seizure of ₹2.3 crore stuffed inside a spare tyre in Karnataka in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election that year.
A keyword search threw up more reports on the same incident, establishing that it dated back to 2019.
The same clip was also used more recently during the 2023 Karnataka Assembly election with a similar, misleading claim.
