Unrelated Image Falsely Shown as Indian Army Casualties in Galwan

The Quint’s WebQoof team found that the same image was published in a blog and an article in 2015 as well.

A viral image falsely claimed to show bodies of Indian soldiers who died at Galwan Valley on 15 June.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

An old picture of bodies of soldiers is being falsely shared as an image of Indian Army soldiers who died in the violent face-off that took place between the troops of India and China at the Galwan Valley on 15 June.

While the exact origin of the image could not be ascertained, we found that the same image was published in a blog and an article in 2015.

You can view the archived version here.

CLAIM

The image shared by one Facebook user ‘Kashmir update’ had over 680 shares at the time of publishing the article.

The caption along with the image reads: “Pic from Ladakh Indian Army (sic)”.

You can view the archived version here.

Twitter users shared the image with the caption: “Start count down.”

You can view the archived version here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We reverse searched the image on Google and found a blogpost by Times Press Africa published in November 2015. The blog that carried the viral image is titled as ‘Army buries decomposed bodies of 105 missing soldiers in Maiduguri’.

“Nigerian Times gathered exclusively that the decomposed bodies of the men who were killed in an encounter with the terrorists last week Wednesday were brought to Maiduguri Monday evening in body bags and were confirmed by the Brigade Commander, Army Engineering Corps (sic),” the article reads.

A reverse image search led us to a blogpost published in 2015.

We then reverse searched the image on Google with keywords ‘Nigerian times’ and found an article published in The Biafra Times in November 2015.

We reverse searched the image again using relevant keywords and found an article by The Biafra Times.

The article titled as ‘Nigeria: Buhari Sacrifices 105 Nigeria Soldiers to Arm Boko Haram’ had also carried the viral image then.

The article published in 2015 carried the viral image.

While The Quint’s WebQoof team has not been able to independently verify the origin of the image, it is certain that it does not show Indian Army soldiers who died in Galwan Valley on 15 June.

We had earlier debunked another image showing a large number of coffins wrapped in the Indian tricolour which was being falsely shared as an image of the coffins of all the Indian Army personnel who died in the violent face-off.

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