A Facebook page President Saab had shared a video on January 7 with a caption, “Salute to indian army”. In the video, two men dressed as Indian army soldiers are shooting a selfie video while in another frame, a soldier can be seen resting in a trench. The message shared along with the video suggests that these are Indian army personnel. The video has been shared widely on Facebook garnering close to 52,000 shares from this page alone. It has been viewed more than 20 lakh times so far.
Actor and NOT Indian army personnel
Alt News found a watermark inscribed in the video which reads, “@official_gurstar”. A Google search of the keyword reveals that @official_Gurstar is an Instagram handle by a Punjabi model and actor named Gurucharan Singh alias Gur Star. Scrolling through the account, we found a video in which the actor makes a public appeal about the videos and images that have gone viral on social media. In the appeal, the actor says that he is the person in the video and he urges people to help him get the viral videos deleted by the individuals who have posted it online as he has had to face a lot of problems in this regard.
Glancing further at Singh’s profile, we also found several pictures posted by the actor donning the same attire as seen in the video viral on social media. It is from the sets of a Punjabi film, Subedar Joginder Singh. This claim was earlier fact-checked by Boom Live.
In conclusion, a staged video where the individuals were in Indian army attire was falsely shared as an actual video of army personnel on ground zero.
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