Old cannon footage falsely linked to India-Pakistan conflict

Published on May 20, 2025 at 07:38
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

After India and Pakistan entered into a ceasefire on May 10 following days of intense fighting, social media users falsely claimed a video showed a Pakistani missile being defused by Indian villagers. The footage was filmed months before the conflict and depicts an old cannon being ignited during a village event in India.

"This is a Pakistani missile which has fallen in a field somewhere in our country. The villagers fused it with the help of wood," reads a Hindi-language Facebook post published May 10, 2025.

The video shows a group of onlookers sitting on a hill as a man ignites a small device, which then detonates with a loud bang.

"Such missiles from Pakistan are like a game of firecrackers for the Indian children at the moment," the caption says.

Screenshot of the false post taken May 16, 2025

The same claim also circulated with similar claims on Facebook and X.

The posts surfaced online after India said it had carried out strikes against "terrorist camps" in Pakistan, which led to four days of fighting before a ceasefire between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals was announced by US President Donald Trump on May 10 (archived links here and here).

India claimed Pakistan backed the militants behind an April attack that killed 26 in Indian-administered Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies.

But the circulating footage was filmed in February -- months before the current conflict.

A reverse image search on Google using the video's keyframes found an identical Instagram video published February 11 (archived link).

The one-word Hindi-language caption says: "Cannon".

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the Instagram video

The same Instagram user had previously uploaded other videos filmed from the same location.

Ashish Meena, a resident of Bagadiya village in Karauli, Rajasthan, confirmed to AFP that he shot the video.

"This is a very old cannon kept in our village, which was fired by us on the birthday of the local MLA," he said May 14, referring to a member of the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly.

Meena said the cannon was a form of entertainment for the villagers, adding that "it had nothing to do with the recent conflict with Pakistan."

Hansraj Meena, an MLA from the Sapotra constituency, also shared his birthday celebration clips on his Facebook page on February 10 (archived link).

AFP geolocated the spot where the video was filmed using Google Earth. The same terrain, fields and hill behind a residential area are visible in the satellite imagery (archived link).

Screenshot comparison of the video (L) and Google Earth, with elements highlighted by AFP

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the India-Pakistan clashes here, here and here.

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