Disaster officials in Nagaland, a mountain state in northeast India, bordering Myanmar, called for calm after social media erupted with claims the monster quake could hit the region today or tomorrow.
The area has previously been hit by powerful earthquakes.
According to the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA), users have been posting warnings on Twitter.
One user reportedly wrote: “A huge earthquake with a magnitude around 8.5 is predicted to happen in Nagaland on August 29 or 30.
“People have already started building relief camps in Dimapur.”
But the NSDMA today dismissed such rumours and appealed to the public to stay calm but vigilant.
The rumour appears to have begun due to a mock emergency exercise being carried out by the NSDMA tomorrow across the state to test its response to a major tremor.
NSDMA officials have called for the public to cooperate with the exercise rather than panic.
The NSDMA said: “What many do not know is that there is no scientifically plausible way of predicting the occurrence of a particular earthquake.
“It is important to note that prediction, as people expect it, requires predicting the magnitude, timing, and location of future earthquake, which is not currently possible.”
Many people have claimed to predict when an earthquake will strike, but aside from a few lucky guesses by people who were more often wrong that not, it has yet to conclusively happen.
Charles Richter, inventor of the Richter Scale, which measures the strength of an earthquake, once said: “Only fools, liars and charlatans predict earthquakes.”