CLAIM
A video of police officers kneeling on the ground and firing at a group of protesters, raising slogans, has gone viral on social media.
Several users, mostly from Pakistan, have claimed that the video shows peaceful protesters in Kashmir being shot at by the security forces. They claim that the video is ‘proof’ of the atrocitites subjected upon Kashmiris by the Indian security forces.
As seen in the video, several policemen are in a kneeling position with their guns pointed at a crowd, and they can be heard shouting some slogans. Then the police open fire at the crowd, apparently shooting two men down.
Following this, the crowd disperses while policemen can be seen running with a stretcher to the spot.
Sometime later, an ambulance starts moving in the same direction with an announcement in the background.
TRUE OR FALSE?
False! The video, in reality, is of a Jharkhand Police mock drill in the state’s Khunti district. It was shot well over a year ago.
Upon close analysis of the video, certain observations can be drawn suggesting that the video is a mock drill and not an actual police shooting:
- In the moments after the firing, the crowd on either side of the road (in the vicinity of the firing) remains rooted to the spot. Generally, in cases of police firing in riot-control situations, the bystanders can be seen panicking and dispersing soon after the firing starts.
- Multiple people can be seen recording the firing on their phones in anticipation of an event, ie, the mock drill.
- The most conclusive hint comes towards the end of the video, where an announcement can be heard in the background, reassuring the crowd that the whole thing was a drill.
“(I would like to inform the audience once again that this is only a demo... Khunti police has displayed its agility and preparedness to deal with any situation),” the announcement can be heard as saying (in Hindi).
Here is the full video of the training exercise from a different angle:
VIDEO EARLIER USED AS ‘MANDSAUR SHOOTING’
Earlier this year, the same video was used out of context to claim that police was shooting farmers in Mandsaur.
Multiple users on social media had shared the video:
Alt News had independently verified that the video was of a mock drill by getting in touch with the owner of a store on the street the drill took place on (visible in the video). He had confirmed that a mock drill had, in fact, been carried out by the police on 31 October 2017.
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