Misinfo sparked by Pak X accounts Falsely Targeting India over Iranian Prez Tragedy
The Iranian President Raisi died in a deadly chopper crash on Sunday, May 19, near the East Azerbaijan province as it was crossing through mountains terrain in heavy fog. His fatal demise sent shockwaves across West Asia. Not only this, but it also sparked a wave of misinformation on X(formerly Twitter). Concurrently, the DFRAC team came across some false claims alleging India’s involvement. Here are the snippets of some significant fact-checks conducted in this regard.
Fact-Check 1
A pak-based handle named PSYWAR Bureau shared a collage and claimed that two Indian diplomats were arrested in Iran amid Prez Raisi’s chopper crash probes.
On fact-checking, we found that no reports had been published in this regard. Moreover, images of two Indian diplomats were falsely employed with this baseless claim.
Fact-Check 2
A claim stating that Iranian intelligence and special forces have raided the Indian embassy in Tehran. India might be acting on Israel’s behalf amid Raisi’s Death, which has been shared by multiple Pak-based handles on X.
In the probe, we discovered that there were no media reports regarding any Indian involvement. A reverse search of shared images revealed that these were misleadingly shared with false claims.
The first image shared with the claim was from 2015. It shows soldiers of Germany’s Special Forces Commando (KSK) taking part in an exercise near Putgarten, Germany on September 28, 2015.
Whereas, the second image shows the Taiwanese army.
Fact-Check 3
Taking to X, several pak-based users claimed that one of India’s top diplomats Sanjeev Mandia from the Indian Embassy in Tehran tried to escape from Iran.
On Investigation, no evidence or media reports have been found supporting the above claim. Moreover, we discovered that the image shared with the claim was from 2022 when Iraq forces arrested ISIS Leaders in Baghdad.
Fact-Check 4
An image of a scorched chopper has been shared by an X user namely Azhar Sayed who claims to be editor-in-chief at Paknews.co, with the claims such as the image belonged to Iranian President Raisi’s Chopper before the crash and the picture was taken by a Chinese satellite.
However, we found this image on the Istock website which was uploaded in 2015.
In this process, we discovered that numerous Pak-based handles had shared fake & baseless claims against India, eventually resulted in fueling the misinformation on social media platforms. It is noteworthy that these Pak-based handles are the Repeated Offenders who usually spread false news and misinformation against India in the scenario of the latest or trending crises.
