Video of Venezuelan accident falsely shared as Indian politician's plane crash
- Published on February 3, 2026 at 10:15
- 2 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
The deputy leader of India's western Maharashtra state was killed along with four other people when their chartered plane crashed on January 28, but video circulating online of a small aircraft crashing onto a runway does not show the accident. The footage was first shared in reports of a crash in western Venezuela in October 2025, which killed two crew members.
The clip of a plane taking off briefly before falling onto a runway and bursting into flames was shared on Instagram on January 28, 2026, and was captioned "Live crash video of Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar's plane".
Overlaid text on the video also claims it shows Maharashtra's deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar's private plane, which crashed in an open field while landing at the state's Baramati airport on January 28 (archived link).
Aviation authorities said all five people on board were killed.
The video also surfaced in similar Instagram and X posts, but it does not show Pawar's plane crash.
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the falsely shared video found the same footage published on YouTube by French newspaper Le Figaro on October 23, 2025 in a report about a plane crash in Venezuela (archived link).
The video's description states that the crash occurred the previous day at the Paramillo airfield in the San Cristóbal National Park in Venezuela's western Táchira state. Two people were killed while two others were seriously injured, it said.
A woman can be heard speaking in Spanish in the original audio.
Colombian newspaper El Tiempo also included the video in its report about the crash (archived link).
Moreover, the landscape seen in the circulating video matches a photo of the Paramillo airfield runway uploaded by a user to Google Maps (archived link).
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