Manipur woman shot dead on road? Viral video is actually from Myanmar; misreport by Assam newspaper

[The story only uses screenshots and not the entire video in view of the violent nature of the content.]

A video of a woman being tortured and killed by a group of men and women, some of whom can be seen wearing Army-style camouflage attire, is viral on social media with the claim that the incident occurred recently in Manipur. Some claimed that the woman belonged to the Kuki community while others claimed that she was a Meitei. Social media users and Assamese newspaper Amar Asom related this incident to the ongoing violence in Manipur since May 3.

The woman in the video can be seen handcuffed while the group slaps her, kicks her and she pleads with them. The words spoken by them are incomprehensible. Towards the end of the video, one of the persons from the group blindfolds the woman and shoots her from behind. After she falls down to the ground he shoots her in the head multiple times.

Assamese newspaper Amar Asom carried a report on Page 1 on June 19 with a frame from the video. The caption said, “Cruel: A young woman shot point black on the main road”. The ‘turn’ on page 13 said that the video showed the barbarism rampant in Manipur due to the ongoing violence. It also said that the incident affirmed the claim by a retired Army officer that the situation in Manipur could be compared to that of Syria and Lebanon. (Archive 1, 2)

Twitter Blue user Mαɳιʂԋ Kυɱαɾ αԃʋσƈαƚҽ 🇮🇳🇮🇳 (@manishkumarttp) shared the video on June 19 with the above-mentioned claim. The caption in Hindi can be translated as: “#Manipur has gone out of control of Modi and Shah. Videos of armed civilians torturing a Kukhi Christian young girl and eventually shooting her to death are emerging. Manipur is burning and Modi is silent.” The tweet has now been deleted. (Archive)

Author Ashok Kumar Pandey quote tweeted the above tweet by @manishkumarttp with a Hindi caption which said, “All this is happening in one part of the country and the government and the media are busy trying to prove that everything is fine.” He later deleted the quote tweet. (Archive)

While Twitter user हम लोग We The People (@ajaychauhan41) who shares misinformation on a regular basis, shared the same video the same day claiming that the woman killed in the video was a Meitei Hindu woman. (Archive)

Several other users, including @niayayakkural, @samwham6, shared the video on social media. The video is also viral on WhatsApp. Alt News received multiple requests to fact-check the viral video.

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Fact Check

After breaking down the video into keyframes, we ran a reverse image search on a few of them. This led us to several news reports related to the the viral video. A news report by Mizzima, a Burmese multimedia news organisation from December 8, 2022 carried a screengrab from the video and the headline said: “NLD investigating execution of alleged junta informer in Sagaing’s Tamu Township”. NLD stands for the National League for Democracy, a de-registered liberal democratic political party in Myanmar founded by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The report mentioned that the woman’s name was Aye Mar Tun (24), a resident of Sagaing Region’s Tamu Township. She was allegedly killed in June 2022, by the members of People’s Defence Force (PDF) on suspicion of being an informant, which led to the arrest of several PDF members. It was also mentioned that the government said that severe penalties would be imposed on PDF members if they were found guilty of killing the woman.

We came across several other news reports that reported the same. Reporting on the matter, Myanmar Now mentioned that the people in military attire seen in the video asked the woman to confess that she was an informant. When she kept denying, she was killed by one of the members of the group present at the scene.

Therefore, the video is not from Manipur and the woman in the video is not from the Kuki or the Meitei community. The incident occurred last year in Myanmar.