Clip From Arunachal Falsely Linked to CDS General Bipin Rawat’s Chopper Crash

The video is of a helicopter crash at Anjaw in Arunachal Pradesh on 18 November 2021.

A video of a helicopter falling to the ground is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows the chopper crash that killed Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, his wife, and other personnel on Wednesday, 8 December, in Tamil Nadu.

However, we found that the said video was of a helicopter crash in Arunachal Pradesh from 18 November 2021. The chopper that belonged to the Indian Air Force (IAF) was carrying five people, who had all escaped unhurt or with minor injuries.

CLAIM

The short clip is being shared by netizens, claiming it shows the helicopter, which had CDS General Bipin Rawat on-board, crashing.

Archived versions of more such claims on social media can be seen here, here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using InVID, a video verification tool, we fragmented the video into keyframes and ran reverse image searches on some of them.

The search led us to a tweet by news platform East Mojo published on 18 November, which carried the video and said that it was from Anjaw, Arunachal Pradesh.

IAF's MI-17 helicopter crash-landed at Roccham helipad in Arunachal's #Anjaw district on Thursday. No casualties were reported.

The helicopter was doing ration sorties from Hayuliang to Roccham for the Indian Army and included two pilots, one engineer and two crew members. pic.twitter.com/Jncm5647hq

— EastMojo (@EastMojo) November 18, 2021

It added that there were five army personnel on-board and no casualties had been reported. We then looked for more news reports on the incident.

A Times of India report carried the same visuals and identified the aircraft as an IAF MI-17 helicopter.

According to the report, the helicopter was carrying out a sortie when it crash-landed at Roccham helipad in Anjaw. It said that the aircraft's rotors had been "completely damaged."

The Quint had also reported on the incident, stating the aircraft was carrying out ration sorties for the army from Hayuliang to Rochham of Anjaw district in Arunachal Pradesh, when the helicopter crashed due to a technical snag.

The report said that while four of the five personnel were unhurt, an engineer on board had sustained minor injuries.

We also found the same video uploaded on Hindustan Times' verified YouTube channel.

Clearly, the aforesaid video does not show the fatal crash of the IAF Mi-17V5 helicopter carrying CDS General Bipin Rawat, his wife and other military officials.

Several visuals are being circulated on social media, linking unrelated incidents to the chopper crash that killed CDS General Rawat. You can read other such reports by The Quint here and here.

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