A video of a man dressed in army fatigues, who is seen brutally stabbing a dead body with a knife, is being shared on social media. Twitter user Mirza Javed Ullah Khan posted the video with the narrative that these are soldiers of the Indian army meting out brutality on these ‘martyred Kashmiri Muslims’.
Another Twitter user shared the same video with a similar narrative.
Fact-check
With the help of digital verification tool Invid, Alt News broke the video into multiple frames, which were then used to perform a reverse search on Google. It was found that the video has been manipulated with unrelated audio superimposed over it. This video depicting extremely disturbing visuals is at least seven years old and has been shared in the context of the politics of West-Asia. There is no reference to India in the 2012 article that Alt News found. We found the screenshot of the frames from the viral video posted in a blog published on November 3, 2012. Moreover, the blog claimed that these soldiers were from Syria’s secret police, the Shabiha.
Alt News was unable to independently ascertain that these visuals depicted Syria’s Shabiha. However, it is clear that the video couldn’t be a recent one from Kashmir.
In conclusion, a seven-year-old video of a man, dressed in army fatigues, relentlessly stabbing a dead person is being falsely propagated on social media as footage of brutality meted out on Kashmiris by Indian army personnel.
Independent journalism that speaks truth to power and is free of corporate and political control is possible only when people start contributing towards the same. Please consider donating towards this endeavour to fight fake news and misinformation.
