Pakistan creates fake Indian twitter handles to show fake Rafale training crash using old photos

September 13, 2020 Mohd Nadeem Siddiqui

Spread the truth:

A set of aircraft pictures, with Rafale in one and crash in three, is viral on many social media platforms with the following text :

“One rafale jet crash during training. 2 pilots dead.”

Claim: The viral pic claims to be of a crashed Rafale fighter aircraft which had been recently inducted in the Indian Air Force. This crash led to the death of two pilots.

Twitter

A fake twitter handle in the name of famous Aaj Tak news channel journalist Shweta Singh also tweeted the same pictures. The archived link of this tweet can be accessed from here.

The above Fake Twitter handle in the name of Sweta Singh of Aajtak has been changed to Journalist Sagarika Ghose, and has more than 1000 Retweets now –

Breaking news: one Rafale jet crash during training.
2 pilots dead 😭🙏#IndianArmy #IndianAirForce #RafalePowersIndia #RafaleInduction #rafale_india_crashed pic.twitter.com/cOVEcJqJcV

— Sagarika Ghose (@Sagarika_Ghose1) September 10, 2020

Facebook

T

Truth

There has been no Rafale Jet crash, the photos used with it are old, of different jet.

The Fake IDs are created under name of Indian Journalists and being retweeted by thousands of Pakistanis.

The Fake ID Sweta Singh was changed to Sagarika Ghose within a day

This tweet has been retweeted for more than 1K times by Pakistanis.

NO the viral pictures are not from any crash done by Rafale aircraft of the Indian Air Force. During the course of our investigation, we found a clarification in this regard from the official fact check handle of the Press Information Bureau that there is no such news of any Rafale crash. A similiar Fake Tweet was viral under the name of Indian Air Force

Claim:An alleged tweet by @IAF_MCC claims that a combat aircraft Rafale jet has crashed near Ambala Airbase due to technical fault and a pilot is martyred#PIBFactCheck: The image is #Morphed. No such tweet has been posted by IAF. Also, no such incident has taken place#FakeNews pic.twitter.com/QDMbzNHQ7U

— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) September 11, 2020

Now we took out all the viral images and used google reverse image search and found out the following results :

All three photos are from Feb 2019, Mirage 2000 crash in Bengaluru.

First photo

Source – The Print

Second Photo
Source: The Print

Third Photo

Source: Indian Express

We found the above two images embedded in a news article done by The Print. In this article, it is clearly mentioned that on 1st February 2019 that an IAF Mirage trainer aircraft crashed in Bengaluru killing its 2 pilots.

We found this image in an article by Indian express dated 1st February 2019 an this also clearly mentions that an IAF Mirage trainer aircraft crashed in Bengaluru killing its 2 pilots. Now while searching for the 4th viral image we found out that this viral image belongs to the following tweet thread of the media coordination center of IAF.

The Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria & AOC-in-C WAC Air Marshal B Suresh welcomed the first five IAF Rafales which arrived at AF Stn Ambala today.#IndianAirForce #RafaleInIndia #Rafales pic.twitter.com/xNK97fwynf

— Indian Air Force (@IAF_MCC) July 29, 2020

This tweet dated 29th July 2020 clearly mentions that these pics belong to the welcome ceremony which was organized to welcome the first five Rafales of the IAF.

Therefore in our investigation, all the claims mentioned in the viral posts were found to be false.

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Mohd Nadeem Siddiqui

Author of 2 books and a former researcher on Homeland, Defence and National Security for last 10 years.Independent Fact Checker and busting fake news.

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