No, That's Not the Satellite Footage of the IAF Helicopter Crash

The clip of a chopper crashing was digitally created and aired by Tamil television channel News 7 Tamil.

A clip showing visuals of a helicopter crashing into a forest is being widely shared claiming that it shows the chopper crash in Coonoor that claimed the lives of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and 12 others on 8 December 2021.

However, we found that the viral clip was actually taken from a news bulletin aired by Tamil news channel News 7 Tamil, and shows a simulation of the crash.

The clip, which was a part of a detailed bulletin about the crash in Coonoor also shows names of air bases and shows digitally created visuals of Rawat in the chopper.

CLAIM

The short clip is being shared with the following text:

"Satellite video of helicopter crash in coonoor. I think the tail rotor got snapped and it suddenly turned in reverse direction and crashed within 2 seconds. No reaction time. (sic)"

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

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We observed the video and saw that it carried the watermark and logo of a Tamil news channel 'News 7'.

We looked for this report on their YouTube channel and found a detailed report, which carried the same visuals. This video also had digitally created visuals that showed the late General in a chopper.

Throughout the report, the channel did not claim that the video was satellite footage, nor did they claim that it was a real video of the mishap.

Next, we looked for more visuals of the crash using keywords in Tamil on the channel and found the same video as the one which is now viral, uploaded on 8 December 2021.

We translated this video's title to English, and saw that it read 'Graphical display'.

The video has no other elements except the graphics depicting the way the helicopter may have crashed.

Clearly, a digitally created representation of the IAF chopper crash in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu was wrongly shared by social media users as satellite footage of the incident that claimed 13 lives, including that of the late CDS General Bipin Rawat, his wife, and other defence personnel.

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