On December 8, 2021, Chief of Defence Staff of the Indian Armed Forces Bipin Rawat, died in an IAF’s helicopter crash that happened in Tamil Nadu.
In context to the above information, a video of a helicopter catching fire and crashing is widely being shared claiming to be the one that was carrying Rawat.
A Twitter user shared the video with a caption that reads, “#bipinrawat #IndianArmy #IndianAirForce #HelicopterCrash #TamilNadu #Coimbatore RIP SIR Bipin Rawat Helicopter Crashed In Tamil Nadu Video.” The link to the post can be seen here and its archive can be seen here.
Source:Screenshot/Twitter
A similar post was shared by another user which can be seen here and its archive can be seen here.
Source:Screenshot/Twitter
Similar posts can be seen here and here.
FactO Check:
We broke the video into multiple keyframes using InVid tools and then did a Google Reverse Image Search with one of them. The results led to a website, NewsFrol.Ru, on which a screenshot of the video was published on February 11, 2020. The article associated with the image read, “A Mi-8 helicopter of government forces was shot down in the region of Sarakib in the Syrian province of Idlib. Two pilots died in the incident.”
We found that the article also had a video of the incident.
We compared both the viral video with the original video and found them to be the same.
We also found that the same video was uploaded by another YouTube channel on February 11, 2020.
Thus, we can ascertain that the viral video is of a Syrian helicopter shot down and not of the plane crash of Bipin Rawat. Hence, the viral claim is fake.
