Republic TV Shares Old, Unrelated Image Linking to Manipur Violence

One of the images used in the debate bulletin dated back to 2007 and had no connection to Manipur.

On 3 September, Editor-in-chief of Republic TV Arnab Goswami hosted a debate talking about a drone attack in Manipur and alleged foreign involvement in the same.

What did Goswami say?: Using multiple images, Goswami said, "Ladies and gentlemen, look at these pictures. This picture is of the ITLF drone squad. They issued a press release against me today. This was recovered in the month of October 2023. A drone was seized by the Manipur police and from the memory card, this footage was recovered. This establishes that they are running a drone squad. This was submitted to the court by some parties during the hearing on Manipur violence..."

Republic TV_Manipur by Quint Digital Media Limited

The problem with the claim: The second image used in the debate bulletin had no connection to India, let alone Manipur.

• It could be traced back to 2007 and showed eight Qassam launchers.

• These Qassam launchers are artillery rockets developed by the military arm of Hamas.

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How did we find that out?: Using Google Lens, we conducted a reverse image search and found the same image published on Wikimedia Commons.

• As per the details available, the image was captured on 6 July 2007.

• Its description said, "Eight Qassam launchers, seven equipped with operating systems and one armed and ready to launch."

Comparing visuals: Team WebQoof further compared the visual available on Republic TV to the one uploaded on Wikimedia Commons and found both of them are the same.

News reports carrying the same image: A report published in France24 had used the same image while talking about "Palestinian militants" firing rockets into Israel.

• We found more media reports that carried the same image, which established the fact that the image had been used as a representational one over the years.

• You can view these reports here and here.

Conclusion: It is clear that the image is old and is unrelated to Manipur or India.

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