Fact Check: Did Nepalis convert to Islam after deadly floods? Video is from 2024

More than a thousand people have died in Nepal's recent floods and landslides, one of the worst natural disasters to hit the Himalayan nation.As visuals of the flood and subsequent rescue mission continue to populate social media, one video going viral purports to show 41 Nepali youths converting to Islam in the disaster.Notably, the floods came after several incidents of communal violence in Nepal. And some content creators have framed the floods as divine retribution, with some calling it "Allah's revenge”. India Today Fact Check found that the video predates the Nepal floods and was filmed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.OUR PROBEA keyword search for reports of religious conversions following the Nepal floods yielded no credible results. A Google Lens search of the video led us to the same clip shared by the Facebook page New Muslim Revert in April 2024. This confirmed that the video is unrelated to the recent disaster. A further search led us to a set of photographs showing an identical venue and a similar event. The caption identified the place as the Al-Da'wah Association in Badi'ah.A subsequent Google Maps search led us to Masjid Ghazwa Al-Mutairi in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Photographs of the mosque's interiors on Google Maps matched the viral video, confirming that the footage was from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — not Nepal.Therefore, it is clear that an old video from Saudi Arabia was falsely linked to the Nepal disaster.- EndsPublished By: Pathikrit SanyalPublished On: Sep 1, 2026 20:19 IST