According to a defence official, the Indian Army’s Cheetah helicopter crashed in Mandala, west of Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh, on March 16, killing both the pilots. Against this backdrop, an image of a crashed chopper is widely shared on social media linking it to the copter crash in Arunachal Pradesh.
The image is shared on Facebook with a caption: “#Arunachal_Pradesh:- Indian Army Cheetah helicopter crashes in Arunachal Pradesh, two Pilots found dead, according to information.”
Here’s the link to the above post.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above claim, and found it to be MISLEADING.
Doing a Reverse Image Search, we spotted a news report in The Wire, dated April 1, 2022, with a headline: “Army Wives’ Group Appalled at MoD’s Celebration of ‘Flying Coffin’ Chetak Helicopters.” But the image caption reads: “The Chetak helicopter of the Indian Army which crash-landed following a technical snag, in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir, Monday, Feb. 3, 2020.”
Many media reports in February 2022 had carried the same viral image. According to reports, “A Cheetah helicopter of the Indian Army, on a training sortie from Udhampur, crash-landed in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday morning.”
Thus, we can conclusively say that an old image from Jammu and Kashmir is falsely linked to the recent Arunachal Pradesh chopper crash.
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