Never wrestle with a comedian; he’ll turn you into a joke. The Indian Railways is finding that out the hard way with Kunal Kamra fact-checking a railways fact-check of his video.

Kamra, in a new episode of his YouTube series Jan Hith Mein Jari, had raised questions about the conditions of trains, highlighting staffing issues, track renewal budgets, investment priorities and accidents.

Railway Fact Check, “the official fact check account of the Ministry of Indian Railways”, quickly put out a post with a “Misleading” sticker slapped across screenshots of the video and Kamra’s face.

“Certain facts and footage in this video are misleading in nature and is an attempt to sabotage the image of Railways. Kindly refrain from sharing such misleading content,” read the post.

Kamra asked for the handle to clarify which facts were misleading in his video.

"The Indian Railways’ fact-checking wing – which was formed just a month ago – took four images from my video, labelled them as misleading, and posted them on Twitter,” Kamra said in Hindi in his fact-check of the fact-check.

“When I replied asking what in my post was misleading – my face? – their fact-checking unit actually put in the effort to make a video," Kamra quipped.

Railway Fact Check answered his question with a video that highlighted the said factual inaccuracies.

The page corrected Kamra’s claim that nearly 25,000 railway-related accidents took place in the year 2023, stating that there were 24,678 mishaps and not just train accidents.

Furthermore, they said that 21,803 deaths took place – with most of them being non-train deaths such as falling, trespass and suicides – as opposed to the nearly 22,000 deaths from accidents claimed in the video.

Kamra quipped back: "Now, dragging the deaths of 21,803 people into shameless propaganda is downright villainous. Who can take them seriously? Facts matter, whether you like them or not. BJP workers and IT cell trolls don’t quite understand. If I say democracy is almost dead in India, they'll rush to fact-check me.”

He claimed that over 1.5 lakh sanctioned posts in safety-critical categories including loco pilots and track maintainers remain vacant. This deficiency, he claimed, forces existing staff into shifts of 14 to 20 hours.

"The railways must be sensitive because you see the prime minister waving the green flag often,” Kamra deadpanned. “They keep bringing new ‘cheap’ bullet trains and eat up the general compartments, and as we keep telling you — how many kilometres of track are built and how many track maintainers died in the process, we’ll keep reporting that for public benefit and accountability."

Kamra argued that the railways is increasingly favouring air-conditioned coaches despite the vast majority of Indians travelling in non-AC General and sleeper classes. This shift, he contended, contributes to dangerous overcrowding and stampede-like situations at major stations for lower-income passengers.

A central point of Kamra's critique was the contrast between the funding for the flagship Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, estimated at Rs 281 crore per kilometre, and the 'Kavach' anti-collision system, which costs approximately Rs 50 lakh per kilometre.

"It’s Indian Railways. Nothing runs on time except the station clock. Trains don’t come on time, the website doesn’t load, sometimes tickets don’t get confirmed, and sometimes even confirmed tickets get stuck in RAC," he said.

Kamra has frequently used his social media platforms and comedy shows to criticise government handling of various issues, including the annual pollution spike in the National Capital Region.

"The way this government suppresses working and accountability by hiding data or spreading propaganda isn't new,” he claimed in the newest video. “Whether it’s PM CARES, electoral bonds, AQI monitors, or spraying chemicals in the Yamuna, or creating a separate pool [reference to reported pool for Chhath in Delhi] these are just some of our government’s prime hobbies, and being shocked by them is something we’ve given up on,” he said in the video.

“India is a propaganda-driven country, but let me say, people aren’t fools," he added.