A group of Chinese soldiers who allegedly crossed over into the Indian side of Tibet were temporarily detained by Indian soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang.
Against this backdrop, a photo has been shared with the claim that it depicts Indian army personnel with the captive Chinese soldiers. It is claimed that Indian soldiers detained more than 150 Chinese soldiers in Arunachal Pradesh. BJP Ghaziabad’s social media convener Anand Kalra shared the picture. Kalra’s post amassed more than 2,000 retweets as of this writing. (Archive link)
Twitter user ‘हम लोग We The People’ also amplified the photo with the same claim. (Archive link)
राहुल गांधी या कोई वामपंथी कभी इस पर ट्वीट नहीं करेंगे कि भारतीय सेना ने अरुणाचल में डेढ़ सौ से ज्यादा चीनी सैनिकों को बंदी बना लिया फिर जब चीन के सेना के कमांडर और भारतीय कमांडर के बीच में मीटिंग हुई उसके बाद ही नहीं छोड़ा गया। pic.twitter.com/9TTW3DPAX1
— हम लोग We The People (@humlogindia) October 9, 2021
It is widespread on Twitter and Facebook.
Fact-check
Alt News performed a reverse image search and found a few similar images in news articles from December 2020. One of these reports has shared the photo as a behind-the-scenes of a movie on the clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley. (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4)
It is noteworthy that on June 15, 2020, 20 soldiers of the Indian Army were martyred in a deadly face-off with Chinese soldiers in the Galwan Valley.
We performed a keyword search based on this, which led us to a YouTube video uploaded on December 3, 2020. Scenes from the viral photo appear in this clip at the 5:48 mark. According to the description, this is a video from the shooting of a film titled ‘LAC’. The film is about the violent skirmishes between Indian and Chinese soldiers in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. It also names Instagram user ‘ig_tonyjaa’ as the choreographer for the film. Tony Jaa himself clarified the context behind the image on Facebook.
Daily Excelsior had also aired scenes from the shooting of LAC on November 30, 2020.
The film previously made headlines last year when cast member Rahul Roy suffered a brain stroke during the shoot and had to be airlifted from Kargil to Mumbai.
To sum it up, the viral image of Indian soldiers who allegedly captured China’s PLA personnel is actually from a film shoot.
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