Rumour

Hamid Mir, a well-known journalist, author, and columnist in Pakistan, had tweeted a video last year of few army jawans torturing a man. He added that this video shows the torture faced by Kashmiris because of Indians.

This tweet of his has been retweeted and shared (here and here) immensely in the past few days.

You can watch the video here:

The video attached by Hamid Mir in his tweet, shows a couple of men brutally beating a man tied up to what appears to be a cot. The man being attacked is screaming out of pain but the merciless attackers don’t stop their violent actions. This was claimed by Mir to be Indians attacking a Kashmiri. His caption read “Look at this torture in Kashmir and see who is making this torture? One can understand that why India is not ready for talks with Pakistan? Yes, Pakistan will definitely ask about this torture”. Under his tweet itself, many other Twitter users have pointed out that this claim of his is absolutely fake. One user had even pointed out that anyone would know his claim is false if the video is watched till 17 seconds.

Our Investigation

If we observe closely from the time span of 17 seconds - 21 seconds, we can vaguely see a symbol on the shirt of one of the men holding down the attacked man. We took a screenshot from the video and modified its brightness and contrast for a better look. The symbol of the attacker's shirt is seen to be Pakistan’s flag and also we can see that the person is wearing a military uniform. Thus, it is pretty evident that the people attacking the man are from the Pakistani army.

Moreover, there are other proofs that adhere to the fact that the men carrying out the violent physical attacks are Pakistani army men. The same video was going viral on Twitter in July 2018 claiming that the video shows Pakistani soldiers attacking a Balochistan civilian. Some even claimed that he was a Balochistan student. However, these claims are not confirmed so we do not know for sure as to who the attacked man is.

Fact

The video is not Indians torturing a Kashmiri, as a deeper look shows that the men attacking belong to the Pakistani army. It is to be noted that Mir is a well-known journalist with more than 5 million followers. It is a shame that he had tweeted out abrupt fake news and has not taken it down till date. There are several recent replies which either sympathize with his point or calls it out for being fake.

This tweet from 2018 suddenly started blowing up recently due to the ongoing issue after the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir. It has been retweeted, shared and commented on by many. This shows the effect of fake news and how it holds validity even after several years.