Fact Check: Did Solapur Airport catch fire after the 9 PM candlelight vigil on April 5?

While the whole world is struggling with the coronavirus, posts containing fake news going viral are becoming a nuisance as well. In a recent viral post shared on social media as well as other media portals, news regarding the Solapur airport broke out. These posts claimed that Solapur airport caught fire on the night of April 5 at 9 PM when PM Narendra Modi had asked the citizens of India to light a candle. 

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Claim:

The headlines of many news sources and even social media portals claimed that the Solapur airport caught fire after some people started bursting crackers instead of lighting candles. The video and the news were shared by many on their social media accounts. They talked about how the 9 PM 9 Minutes were taken too far and it led to an accident. 

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Rating: Fake

The most important part of this post and news is that the videos shared by the people on Twitter as well as on media sources are fake. A video was found on YouTube by a Twitter user which shows a news report by a regional channel of the Solapur airport catching fire. This video was uploaded on February 3, 2020, and has the same visuals and videos from the ones that were allegedly claimed to be of April 5 on Twitter. While there was a fire incident at the Solapur airport on April 5, there is no evidence that it was due to the candlelight vigil.

(Source: YouTube)

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Origin:

The news sources and social media users shared videos and visuals which talked about the Solapur airport catching fire after the candlelight vigil at 9 PM on April 5. While these videos are of a fire at the airport, they belong to an incident that happened in February 2020. The Airports Authority of India tweeted that the fire incident was taken care of and that no damage was caused to the airport property.

Google Trends Analysis

A lot of people went on the internet to search for the incident. The searches reached a peak at 11:30 PM on April 5, 2020.

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