Fact Check: This incredible luxury train is NOT Indian - it's Indonesian

Fact Check: This incredible luxury train is NOT Indian – it’s Indonesian

Trains like the Tejas Express, the Vande Bharat Express, and the Gatimaan Express have redefined train travel in India. And now, on social media on any given day, you are likely to come across videos and photos from these trains with commuters singing praises.

One such video of a luxury train with state-of-the-art facilities has been widely shared with captions like: “In a major makeover NaMo & his team have shown a rapid improvement in the railway infrastructure & trains which earlier resembled a third-world country.”

But is this train Indian? India Today found that the video is from Indonesia.

Identifying the train

We noticed multiple signs on the train were in the Indonesian language, like Nomor (Number), Buka (Open), Tutup Pintu Kembali (Keep Door Closed), and Geser (Slide). These hinted that the video was not from India.

We also noticed a board with the word “INKA” on one of the walls of the train. INKA is an Indonesian state-owned railway vehicle manufacturer.

The video also carried a watermark that said, “adeodatusdeo”. A reverse search of the video’s keyframes led us to a TikTok account of the same name that shared the same video on January 1.

The video was geotagged to Malang, a city in the Indonesian province of East Java. As per its description, the video showed a Ka Gajayana luxury class train that operates between Malang and Jakarta in Indonesia.

With the help of a relevant keyword search, we found images similar to that of the train seen in the viral video shared in a series of tweets by the Twitter account of Kereta Api Indonesia, the public railway operator of Indonesia. As per the tweets, this is a Luxury Train 2 launched on May 26, 2019.

We also found media reports about the launch of this train in 2019. As per the reports, KA Gajayana is a train that boasts facilities like minibars, entertainment units, and seats with 140-degree reclining capacity. The train runs on four routes.

We also found several YouTube videos featuring the interiors of the same train.

A comparison between the screengrabs from one such YouTube video and the viral clip can be seen below.

It is, hence, clear that the video in question is from Indonesia. It has nothing to do with the Indian Railways.

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