This video shows the aftermath of a bus accident in India in October 2019

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 26, 2020 at 05:15
2 min read
By AFP Pakistan

A video viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter claims to show a group of Indian soldiers who were wounded by Chinese troops in June 2020, when the two countries were embroiled in renewed border dispute. The claim is false; the video was published in October 2019 in news reports about a bus accident in Meghalaya, India.

This video has been viewed more than 200,000 times since it was posted on Facebook on June 20, 2020.

The one-minute 41-second video shows a group of wounded soldiers lying on the ground, some of them appear unconscious.

“Don’t lose heart, the ambulance is coming,” a man's voice can be heard saying in Hindi at the 35-second mark.

The Urdu-language caption of the Facebook post translates as: ”Indian soldiers get beating from China. Hue and cry of the wounded, video has come up.”

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A screenshot of the misleading post taken on June 24, 2020

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The footage was also posted here, here, here and here on Facebook and here and here on Twitter along with similar claims.

The video was shared online in June 2020, when heightened tensions on the China-India border near Indian-administered Ladakh led to a deadly clash on June 15. At least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the skirmish, AFP reported here.

However, the claims are false; the video in the misleading posts circulated online months before the 2020 Chinese-Indian border conflicts.

A reverse image search on Google with video keyframes extracted using InVID-WeVerify, a digital verification tool, found this video about a bus crash in Meghalaya, India, on October 31, 2019.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (L) and the October 2019 YouTube video (R):

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A screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading post (L) and the October 2019 YouTube video

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Another identical video was published here on YouTube on November 1, 2019, by Indian broadcaster Nation.

The Hindi-language caption of the video translates to English as: “Meghalaya: A bus carrying 20 BSF (Border Security Force) jawans (soldiers) fell into a deep ditch. 1 civilian assistant died on the spot. BSF jawans were returning to their base at Silchar via Jagrod from Meghalaya on Wednesday.”

Here is a news report on the Meghalaya accident published by the United News of India news agency on October 31, 2019.

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