Does This Image Show A Steep Bridge In Uttar Pradesh? No, It’s In Japan

An image of vehicles travelling on a steep bridge is going viral on social media platforms with users claiming that it shows visuals from Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich.

What did the viral post say?: Sharing the photograph, an X (formerly Twitter) premium user captioned it saying, “Unique picture of the bridge on Dargah Road in Bahraich District of Uttar Pradesh. #bahraich.”

The image is being widely circulated on different platforms, such as X and Facebook. More archives of similar claims can be found here, here, and here.

What are the facts?: The viral image has no connection to either Uttar Pradesh or India. The bridge is actually located in Japan’s Matsue and is named ‘Eshima Ohashi Bridge’.

How did we find that out?: A simple reverse image search on the viral image directed us to similar visuals published on an Instagram handle called ‘civilengineeringdiscoveries’.

• The images were shared on 19 February 2020 and its caption said, “Japan’s Eshima Ohashi bridge.”

• The viral image could be seen uploaded as well on the fourth slide.

• Taking this forward, we conducted a keyword search and found visuals of the same bridge published on stock image website Getty Images.

• It was uploaded on 20 January 2015 with the caption that said, “MATSUE, JAPAN – JANUARY 28: Cars run the Eshima Ohashi bridge on January 28, 2014 in Matsue, Shimane, Japan.”

Other sources: An article published in Mirror UK said that the Eshima Ohashi bridge is the third largest of its kind in the world, which spans across Lake Nakaumi and joins the cities of Sakaiminato and Matsue.

• We searched for the bridge on Google Maps and found similar visuals as seen in the viral image. This led us to conclude that the viral image indeed showed visuals from Japan and not India as claimed.

Conclusion: This image of a bridge is not related to Uttar Pradesh or India.

(This story was originally published by The Quint, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)