Rumour

A user on Twitter shared three images that show the graphic aftermath of incidents. The user has claimed that these images are from Kashmir. These images were used by him to condemn the supposed violence that Kashmiri citizens are facing because of the Indian Government.

The user has also tagged the UN and added several hashtags that adhere to the concept of saving Kashmir.

Many people are setting these images as their status on Whatsapp as well.

Our Investigation

First Image

The first image shows blood splattered all over a road with few people in the frame. We did a search online and found a Facebook post from August 14th of this year. From the caption and the comments under the post, it is pretty evident that the image is an aftermath of animal slaughter ritual. Zooming into the picture on the post, we can even see the carcasses of dead animals as highlighted in the image below.

Second Image

The second image shows blood splattered on the streets again with what looks like a cap of a military man lying in the blood puddle. Around the blood puddle, few policemen with guns running about. Doing a search online using the image attached in the tweet, we were lead to an article from Patrika dating back to 2016. The context of the article is about 3 policemen being killed following a terror attack in Srinagar and the then CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan condemning the same and paying his respects to the martyred.

Third Image

The third image shows a woman with a heavily injured child. This image was identified to be from Gaza by doing a reverse image search on Google. The full image along with the original context can be found on the Getty Images website. According to the information given there, the image shows a woman carrying her injured child while she waits to see the bodies of her deceased daughter and five sisters who were killed in an Israeli missile strike back in 2008. Thus, this image which was claimed by the user to be from Kashmir is actually from Gaza and is more than 10 years old.

Fourth Image

The last image shows a little boy wiping the tears of a woman. By doing a reverse image search, we found a tweet from July 2018 with a caption that reads “A boy wipes tears of his mother during a funeral procession of Khalid Gafar In #Trehgam village of #Kupwara in #Jammu and #Kashmir on 12 July 2018. Khalid was shot dead after #Indian Army opened fire on protesters on Wednesday evening”. We did a further search using keywords from the tweet to verify the authenticity of it and found an article from Telegraph India which had used this image. According to this article, the image is from the funeral of a man called Khalid who was shot dead by the Indian army. He is claimed to be innocent and was closing his shop when he was fired at. An army spokesperson has reported that they opened fire after a mob started heavy stone-pelting. This act of the army led to a case being registered against them, however, we could not find any update about the case online.

Fact

In conclusion, as detailed above, none of the images used by the Twitter user in his tweet are from recent times in Kashmir. Each of the images is a few years old and one of them is from animal slaughter, thus not relating to the context of the killing of humans in any way. Even the images that are from Kashmir, are not of recency. It is to be noted that the user has now deleted his tweet, however, several hundreds of people had already retweeted and liked his tweet and the damage was made.