Old Photo of Accident in Meghalaya Shared With a Misleading Claim About BSF

While the photograph showed an old bus accident involving BSF personnel, no one lost their lives in the incident.

Facct-Check | An old photograph showing a crashed bus from 2019 is going viral with a fabricated claim.

(Photo: The Quint)

The photo of a bus lying upside down after having met with an accident is going viral with a text that claims that 12 Border Security Force (BSF) personnel lost their lives in Meghalaya after their bus met with an accident.

We found that the photograph of the crashed bus was from a 2019 incident when a bus carrying 20 BSF jawans fell into a gorge. However, while the BSF personnel onboard suffered injuries, no one lost their life. One person, a helper on the bus, died in the incident.

Additionally, we also found that the videos and photos from the 2019 incident were also viral before with other misleading claims.

CLAIM

The text on the viral image read, "आज मेघालय की पहाड़ियों सेना से भरी बस निचे गिर गयी लगभग 12 जवानों की आकस्मिक निधन पर..."

[Translation: Today a bus full of armed force personnel fell down in the hills of Meghalaya, consolences on the sudden demise of about 12 soldiers.]

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screeshot)

Archives of more such posts on Facebook can be found here and here.

We also found that in 2020, the same claim was viral on Twitter.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We looked for news reports on recent bus accidents that might have caused the death of 12 BSF personnel but were unable to find any.

We then conducted a reverse image search of the bus and found a news report from 2019 on a website called Northeast Now.

Northeast Now had reported about the accident in October 2019.

(Source: Northeast Now/Screenshot)

According to the article, one person had died and 20 BSF jawans were injured in the incident that happened in East Jaintia Hills.

“The deceased has been identified as J Gogoi, the civilian helper of the bus,” the article said.

Lakador Syiem, superintendent of police, East Jaintia Hills, had then told Northeast Now, “Most of them received serious injuries; however, none succumbed to their injuries. All injured persons have been shifted to Khliehriat CHC.”

The incident was also reported in Pratidin Time.

While going through the search results from the reverse image search, we found that the videos of the same incident were shared in 2020 with a claim that the video showing injured men lying on the ground is from the Galwan valley and was related to the violent face-off that took place between the troops of India and China on 15 June 2020.

To debunk the claim, we spoke with BSF sources and a local journalist, who confirmed that it was a 2019 incident that took place in Meghalaya.

Evidently, an old photograph showing a crashed bus has gone viral with a false claim that 12 BSF personnel lost their lives in a recent accident.

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