{"id":30923,"date":"2019-03-20T22:08:20","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T16:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/?p=30923"},"modified":"2019-03-21T04:03:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T22:33:13","slug":"a-tale-of-untruths-and-innuendo-by-major-gaurav-arya-and-major-surendra-poonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altnews.in\/english-clone-2026\/a-tale-of-untruths-and-innuendo-by-major-gaurav-arya-and-major-surendra-poonia\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of untruths and innuendo by Major Gaurav Arya and Major Surendra Poonia"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 3, Republic TV<\/em> published a report<\/a> claiming that Baloch Republic Army (BRA) had attacked and destroyed 3 Pakistani Army posts. It was claimed that BRA fighters attacked the Pakistani Army outpost in Mand area of Kech district on February 27, 2019.<\/p>\n

A few days later, two Indian army veterans, Major Surendra Poonia and Major Gaurav Arya posted a video with two different claims on Twitter. Poonia tweeted on March 12, while Arya tweeted the same video on March 14. In the video, multiple semi-clad uniformed men, who are blind-folded and have their hands tied behind their back, can be seen being beaten-up by two men in uniform. Both their tweets claimed that the video is related to the alleged attack by BRA fighters on Pakistani army outposts. Poonia’s tweet claimed that the uniformed men being beaten up are Baloch freedom fighters while Arya’s tweet claimed that the men being beaten up are members of Frontier corps, Pakistan’s paramilitary force.<\/p>\n

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Later Poonia deleted his tweet, an archived version of which can be accessed here<\/a>. Major Gaurav Arya’s tweet can be seen below.<\/p>\n

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On 27 Feb freedom fighters of Baloch Republic Army attacked 3 Pak Army posts in Mand area, Distt Kech, Balochistan. So ferocious was the attack that soldiers of Frontier Corps ran away. They were caught by Pak Army SSG & thrashed brutally. See Pak Army without clothes \ud83d\udc47 pic.twitter.com\/9faFdSV8gz<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Major Gaurav Arya (Retd) (@majorgauravarya) March 14, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As can be seen above, Poonia claimed that the video represented human rights violation of Baloch freedom fighters at the hands of the Pakistani army while Arya claimed that the video showed members of Frontier corps being thrashed by Pakistani army personnel after the former had deserted their post when attacked by Baloch fighters.<\/p>\n

It goes without saying that both claims cannot be correct. In fact, Alt News<\/em> found out that both the claims are false. After Alt News<\/em> fact-checked their claims, the two Army veterans put out multiple tweets and Facebook posts challenging the Alt News<\/em> fact-check. This post delves into their counter-claims and the allegations\/innuendos that they made in their follow-up.<\/p>\n

Alt News’ fact-check<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Alt News<\/em> had fact-checked<\/a> the video and established that both Arya’s and Poonia’s claims are false. Arya claimed that the incident depicted in the video had occurred on February 27, whereas Alt News<\/em> found that the same video had existed online at least 22 days earlier i.e on February 5, when it had been uploaded on YouTube<\/a>. According to Republic TV<\/em>‘s report, the alleged attack by BRA fighters on Pakistan outposts happened on February 27. Thus the video that both Poonia and Arya posted cannot be representative of that attack.<\/p>\n