Rumour

A Facebook page called “Independent Kashmir” which as the name suggests, posts content that relates to the idea of Kashmir being an independent state. This account is based in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. The mobile number on the page also belongs to Pakistan.

On August 23rd, this page shared a video which shows men dressed in police uniforms attacking women and children. This was claimed by them to be a video from Kashmir.

The video is accompanied by a caption that roughly translates to “Kashmir's Muslim women and children are tortured.. O Allah protect all Muslims. Violence against Muslim women and children in Kashmir”. 

Our Investigation

We read through the comments initially and found out that some users have pointed out that the setting of the place does not look like Kashmir. We wanted to verify the authenticity of this video, therefore we did a Google reverse image search of keyframes. As a result of the simple reverse image search, we found out this video is actually not from Kashmir and not of recency at all. The search led us to the same videos shared on Facebook in 2018. We tried to trace down the earliest and original video and found it to be posted on 23 November 2018. You can watch the video here:

The video has been posted with the caption that roughly translates to “ Nepal Police put hand on woman”. This was shared by a Nepali page which translates to “Our Nepal Dear Nepal”. This post has also been added with a caption which condemns the violent behaviour exhibited by the Nepal police. This video has more than 1 million views and 19k shares. This video was also shared virally on social media in 2018.

In the screenshot given below, we can see how the majority of the videos that accuse the Nepali police of mistreatment are dated back to 2018. You can see all such posts on Facebook here.

Fact

In conclusion, the post which claims alleged violent behaviour of Indian police or Army on Kashmiri women and children is equipped with false claims and an outdated video. The original video is from Nepal. The video has clearly been shared for the purpose of spreading false propaganda to support the idea of Independent Kashmir.