Following the terrorist attack in Pahalgam on 22 April 2025, which claimed the lives of 25 Indian and one Nepali citizen, the Indian Armed Forces launched ‘Operation Sindoor’ in the early hours of 07 May 2025. The Indian government stated that the operation targeted terrorist infrastructure at nine locations across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, emphasising that no Pakistani military installations were struck. It described the strikes as focused, measured, and non-escalatory.
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh reportedly stated that at least 100 terrorists were killed during the operation. However, Pakistan stated that at least 26 civilians were killed and 46 others injured in the missile strikes. In response, cross-border shelling by Pakistani forces reportedly led to the death of at least sixteen civilians in Jammu and Kashmir. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, along with Col. Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, addressed the media on 07 May 2025 to brief on Operation Sindoor. During the briefing, they released visuals showing the Indian Armed Forces striking the targeted sites.
Amid the ongoing tensions following Operation Sindoor, a video (here, here, and here) has surfaced online claiming to show the aftermath of the operation. One such viral video purportedly shows Indian Army soldiers at the LoC raising a white flag as they retrieve their dead soldiers. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Video shows the Indian Army waving a white flag at Line of Control (LoC) after Operation Sindoor, conducted on 7 May 2025.
Fact: The video is from September 2019 and shows Pakistani soldiers in Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK) raising a white flag to retrieve the bodies of their own soldiers. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the claim, we extracted keyframes from the video and ran a Google reverse image search, which led us to a report published by The Hindu on 15 September 2019. The article stated that the Pakistani Army raised a white flag to recover two bodies of their soldiers who were killed by the Indian security personnel in the Hajipur sector of PoJK.
A post by ANI on X (formerly Twitter) from September 2019 also confirmed the same. During the search, we also found several news reports (here, here, here, and here) on this incident published by India Today, Times of India, Mint, etc.
According to a report by India Today, the incident occurred after the Indian Army retaliated to unprovoked ceasefire violations by Pakistan on 11 September 2019. Initially, Pakistani troops tried to recover one body while providing cover fire, but another soldier was killed in the process. After two failed attempts, they raised a white flag to request permission to retrieve the bodies.
The Times of India also covered the same incident in September 2019, confirming these details. The visuals in the viral video match those seen in all these reports from September 2019. Further, we found no credible news outlet about any such incident involving Indian soldiers waving a white flag in connection with the May 2025 Operation Sindoor.
To sum up, an old and unrelated video from 2019 is falsely being shared as Indian army waving white flag at LoC amid Operation Sindoor.
