Old Kashmir visuals falsely portrayed as April 2025 attack
- Published on April 29, 2025 at 09:08
- 4 min read
- By Akshita KUMARI, AFP India
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Warning: graphic images
"The video of Pahalgam attack has come to light," reads Hindi-language text overlaid to the video shared on Facebook on April 23.
It shows an image of a child sitting on top of a dead person followed by the same toddler's clip inside a vehicle after his apparent rescue.
"The only fault of this child is that he is a Hindu, that is why he lost his father," adds the caption to the post which has been shared over 400 times before it was deleted.
Anger in Indian-administered Kashmir escalated over sweeping detentions in the hunt for the gunmen who carried out the deadly attack in the tourist town of Pahalgam (archived link).
New Delhi has accused Pakistan of supporting "cross-border terrorism" after the attack, the worst on civilians in contested Muslim-majority Kashmir for a quarter of a century.
Islamabad has denied any role, calling attempts to link Pakistan to the attack "frivolous" and vowing to respond to Indian action.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947. Both claim the territory in full.
Rebels in the Indian-run area have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men -- two Pakistanis and an Indian -- who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.
Similar posts on Facebook and X surfaced after the attack, misrepresenting the visuals as recent.
But a combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found the image of the child sitting on top of a body is a horizontally flipped version of a picture in a report from Indian media outlet The News Minute on July 1, 2020 (archived link).
The report said the dead man was the child's grandfather who was killed during an attack in Kashmir's Sopore district.
Content warning
The clip of the same child in the vehicle, also flipped horizontally, has appeared in a report on the same day from ANI news agency (archived link).
It said the visuals show authorities consoling the child following his rescue from the scene of the attack.
Content warning
Hundreds staged protests following the incident, accusing government forces of killing a man during a rebel attack which also left a trooper dead, AFP reported at the time (archived link).
Rebels opened fire from a mosque attic in the town, setting off a battle with security forces, paramilitary police spokesperson Junaid Khan told AFP.
The family of Bashir Ahmed Khan alleged that he was dragged out of his car after the showdown and shot dead by paramilitary troopers.
His three-year-old grandson, who was traveling with him, was later pictured sitting on his chest.
Paramilitary and police forces had denied allegations they shot Khan.
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