A video (here and here) showing thick black smoke rising from a burning building is being circulated on social media, with claims that it depicts a recent fire at the Udhampur Airbase in Jammu and Kashmir. This is being shared in the context of the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows a recent fire at the Udhampur Airbase in Jammu and Kashmir following Operation Sindoor in May 2025.
Fact: The video is unrelated to the Udhampur Airbase. It depicts a fire at a chemical factory in Hanumangarh, Rajasthan in May 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
Upon analysing the viral video, we observed that the fire truck present had “Rajasthan fire service” written on it in Hindi(अग्निशमन सेवा राजस्थान), and its number plate began with ‘RJ’, indicating Rajasthan registration. This suggested that the incident occurred in Rajasthan, not Jammu and Kashmir.
Taking this as a hint, we performed a keyword search on the internet, leading us to news reports (here, here, and here) on a fire accident at a chemical factory in the industrial area of Rajasthan’s Hanumangarh.
These reports stated that a fire broke out in an acid factory in Hanumangarh’s industrial area. Per these reports, two workers lost their lives, and one individual was trapped in the factory. The fire caused panic in the surrounding area and was brought under control after several hours. The visuals posted in these reports (here, here, and here) clearly match the scenes observed in the viral video.
The Press Information Bureau’s (PIB) fact-checking unit also addressed this claim. On 10 May 2025, PIB Fact Check clarified via a post on X (formerly Twitter) that the video in question shows a fire incident at a chemical factory in Hanumangarh, Rajasthan, and is unrelated to the Udhampur Airbase. They confirmed that the Udhampur Airbase remains operational.
To sum up, the viral video claiming to show a recent fire at the Udhampur Airbase in Jammu and Kashmir actually shows visuals of a fire at a chemical factory in Hanumangarh, Rajasthan.
