Fact-Check: How TV9 Bharatvarsh ran an old video to create a false narrative and panic in India

On August 26, 2021, TV9 Bharatvarsh in a news segment aired on their channel that played a video titled “पाकिस्तानी Taliban की भारत को गीदड़भभकी कहा- 24 घंटे में दिल्ली में पाकिस्तान झंडा फहराएंगे”. In this video, an alleged Taliban member from Pakistan can be seen holding two rifles and is threatening to come to Delhi within 24 hours.

The video was posted by several other media pages and individual users with very incendiary remarks and with words of caution for citizens of India that they should beware of this threat.

The video created a very real sense of panic among individuals in India as per the comments we saw on the videos.

Fact-check:

Upon reverse searching the key frames of the video, we found that the video was first posted on youtube on August 7 2019. It was also covered by a Bengali news channel then. There are multiple uploads of this video in 2019.

It is surprising that TV9 Bharatvarsh did not do a fact check on such an alarming video. The purpose of circulating this video then is just to create a false narrative and a certain agenda to attract more public attention and viewership. This video also creates false panic within India. This claim is false.

We have previously fact checked multiple claims made by TV9 Bharatvarsh. You can find them here and here. 

DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

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