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The CCTV video, recorded in October 2024, shows the explosion of a scooter due to firecrackers carried in a bag by the pillion rider. Police have confirmed that the scooter was not an electric vehicle
As per reports, the incident took place in the Eluru Town of Andhra Pradesh on 31 October 2024. (Factly)
A video viral on social media (here, here, and here) allegedly shows an electric vehicle explosion. In the video, which seems like CCTV footage, we see two people travelling on a white scooter before the explosion. Later in the video, a thick white smoke covers the area as people around run away. We fact-check this claim through this article.
An archived version of this post can be found here.
To check the veracity of the claim, we performed a reverse image search using a few keyframes from the viral video which led us to several news reports (here, here, and here) about the incident seen in the viral video.
Bag of fire crackers exploded when a moving vehicle hit the speed breaker in #Eluru. One person was killed and six others sustained injuries during the explosion. pic.twitter.com/e036t0rZ1u— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) October 31, 2024
As per these reports, this incident took place in the Eluru Town of Andhra Pradesh on 31 October 2024. On the occasion of the Deepawali, two men were transporting firecrackers on a scooter when the crackers suddenly exploded, leaving one dead. Reportedly, the vehicle hit a pothole, which caused a violent detonation. A man named Duvvasi Sudhakar lost his life in the incident.
“One person died on the spot and five others suffered injuries when crackers exploded near Gowramma temple in Toorpu Veedhi in the town on Thursday (October 31, 2024). The deceased was identified as D. Sudhakar of Maruthi Nagar. Five others in the area suffered injuries in the blast. The mishap occurred when Sudhakar and another person were carrying firecrackers in a gunny bag on his two-wheeler,” The Hindu reported.
As per the news reports, the crackers’ bag contained onion bombs, which caused the explosion. As per an India Today report from 31 October 2024, “The explosion occurred when a sack of ‘onion bombs’, being transported on a Honda Activa scooter, detonated after the vehicle hit a pothole, causing the firecrackers to shift and trigger a blast.” The local police also said the same in interviews given to local channels (here and here).
Reportedly, they travelled on a ‘Honda Activa Scooty’. None of the news reports stated that it was an electric vehicle. For clarification, we contacted the 1 Town Eluru Police and spoke to the Inspector of Police G Satyanarayana. He told us that the vehicle that exploded in this incident was not an Electric Vehicle.
Further, we accessed the FIR copy of this incident from the AP Police website, which you can find here. According to the FIR, the name of the person who died is Durgasai Sudhakar.
The registration number of the vehicle the duo was riding on was AP39RH8150. We checked the vehicle details on the ‘Vehicle Info’ app and found that the vehicle was a Honda Activa 6G. It was a Petrol vehicle, not an electric one.
In fact, the electric version of Honda Activa was not even launched by the company back then. As per news reports (here and here), it was also launched at the Bharat Mobility Expo 2025 on 17 January 2025.
To sum up, the scooter seen exploding in the viral video is not an electric vehicle.
This story was originally published by Factly as part of the Shakti Collective. Except for the headline/excerpt/opening introduction para, this story has not been edited by News18 staff.
