Fact Check: Air Force jet crashes during drill? This video is over a decade old!
Amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack, Pakistan- and Bangladesh-based social media users began sharing a video of a fighter jet catching fire right after taking off and subsequently crashing. They claimed it was an Indian Air Force fighter jet.One Facebook post said, 'An Indian Air Force fighter jet has crashed during a takeoff drill from a highway as part of a wartime exercise. This is the second crash of their fighter jet since the start of the three-day exercise. Very sad.'advertisement
India Today Fact Check found that while the viral video shows an Air Force MiG-27 and the clip is more than a decade old.OUR PROBEA simple reverse search led us to a longer version of the viral video uploaded to YouTube on January 16, 2013. The video's description stated that the two fighter jets seen in the video were MiG-27. This made it clear that the video is not recent. In the video's comments, many people said that it shows the February 2010 crash of an Indian Air Force's MiG-27 plane flown by Wing Commander Oswald de Abreu.We found a 2024 Instagram post featuring the same video, which stated that it was from February 16, 2010. As per the post, Wing Commander Oswald de Abreu was tasked to carry out an operational mission. Within minutes of taking off, he reported an engine fire and crashed inside the airbase. Oswald did not survive the accident. advertisement View this post on Instagram A post shared by Officer's Mind (@officers_mind)A Hindustan Times report from the time said that the mishap happened at West Bengal's Hasimara IAF base, where a fighter squadron is based. The wing commander was reportedly doing a sortie to Bagdogra. Following the incident, the Eastern Air Command headquarters in Shillong ordered a probe into the incident.HAS THERE BEEN A RECENT ACCIDENT?The Air Force on May 2 conducted a flypast and landing exercise drill on Uttar Pradesh's Ganga Expressway. However, no plane crashes or accidents have been reported. We did not find any credible news reports of an Air Force plane crash after the terror attack in Pahalgam. The most recent Air Force plane crash occurred on April 2 when a Jaguar fighter jet went down in Gujarat.Thus, it's clear that an old video was falsely shared as recent.Tune InMust Watch
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