On 12 June, news agency ANI shared old visuals as “unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan along the LoC.”
As per news reports, there has been unprovoked shelling in Baramulla and Poonch districts resulting in the death of a 40-year-old woman, but the visuals used by ANI are not recent and could be traced back to October 2019.
THE CLAIM
The aforementioned video was shared by ANI with a claim that it is from Rampur Sector of Baramulla district.
“#WATCH J&K: Pakistan had initiated an unprovoked ceasefire violation along the LoC in Rampur Sector of District Baramulla by firing mortars, today morning. (Visuals deferred by unspecified time),” the claim read.
The video which is massively viral on Facebook and Twitter was also broadcast by English News Channel Wion.
WHAT WE FOUND
In the comments section of the ANI tweet, several users pointed out that the video is 5 to 6 months old. Taking a cue from there we fragmented the video into multiple keyframes using InVid Google Chrome extension and followed it up with a reverse image search.
This led us to the same video uploaded by multiple YouTube channels in December 2019.
An extended version of the same video was uploaded by a Pakistan-based web portal, Khabar Walay in October 2019.
While The Quint could not independently verify the video, the fact that it has been in existence before suggests that it is not recent as claimed by ANI and other news organisations.
This is not the first time that ANI has been caught spreading misinformation. Multiple reports by the news agency have been debunked by The Quint in the past. On Friday, 12 June, ANI shared a tweet mentioning that a helicopter had crashed in Tamil Nadu's Pudukkottai district, news which later turned out to be false.
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