A couple of photos are being shared widely on social media with a claim that Nepal has shot down an Indian Air Force (IAF) jet and killed two Indian pilots who crossed the border to conduct an airstrike on the Nepal territories. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photos of an Indian Air Force (IAF) jet shot down by Nepal.
Fact: The posted photos are old. While one photo is related to Libya, the other one shows IAF’s Mirage-2000 fighter which crashed in Bengaluru in 2019. Also, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) – India has clarified that the post is fake. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Photo 1:
When the image was run through Google Reverse Image Search, the same photo was found in an article published in 2011. In the article, the image credit is given to ‘Associated Press’. So, when searched on the ‘AP Images’ website, the full version of the photo was found. In the description of the photo, it is written that ‘a pilot ejects from the cockpit of a doomed warplane after it was shot down over the outskirts of Benghazi, eastern Libya, Saturday, March 19, 2011.’ So, the photo is old and not related to India.
Photo 2:
This photo can be found in an article published by ‘The Statesman’ in February 2019. In the description of the photo, it can be read that the photo shows ‘the site where Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Mirage-2000 fighter crashed at a military airport in the Bengaluru’s eastern suburb on Feb 1, 2019’. The same photo can be also found in the ‘Deccan Herald’ article. So, the plane in the photo was not shot down by Nepal or any other country.
Also, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) – India has clarified that the post is fake and ‘no such claimed action has been conducted by Indian airforce on any neighbouring country.’
To sum it up, old and unrelated images falsely shared as ‘Indian Air Force (IAF) jet shot down by Nepal’.
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