Fact Check: Are Indians burning down 5G towers?

A video of a mobile tower engulfed in flames has gone viral on the social media, with the claim that people had set fire to the 5G tower.

While sharing the image, one user wrote on Twitter, "in ndia people are burning 5G towers."

A reverse search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to a similar video which was posted on YouTube in January 2018. This is almost five years before the launch of 5G in India. As per the video the incident took place in Barara, Ambala.

It must be noted here that 5G technology was not available in India in January 2018.

In February 2018, it was reported that telecom major Bharti Airtel and tech giant, Huawei had announced that they had successfully conducted the first 5G trial in India. The test site was Airtel's Experience Centre in Manesar, Gurugram.

Four years later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the service on October 10 2022 in India, which marked the adoption of 5G technology.

The same clip that has gone viral was also sScreenshot 2023-04-18 at 10.08.17 AM.pnghared in 2019. At that time of sharing it was claimed that a 5G tower in Gujarat had been burnt down.

While the details of the exact incident are not clear, we can concluded that the tower that was burnt down was not a 5G tower. The video is from 2018, which we could confirm and in that year 5G had not been launched in India as yet.