Old video of a man accidentally shooting himself in Pakistan is passed off attributing it to the Taliban - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 26, 2021
Taliban taking control of the Afghan government also led to the Taliban’s seizing the weapons abandoned by the US army & those of the Afghan army. It is in this light a video of a man accidentally shooting himself while testing a weapon is being shared widely across social media platforms with a claim identifying the man as belonging to the Taliban. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a man belonging to the Taliban accidentally shooting himself while testing a weapon.
Fact: The video shows an incident which took place in Abbottabad, Pakistan back in 2019, wherein a man accidentally shot himself during a celebratory gunfire before a wedding ceremony. Multiple news agencies have reported the incident back then. The video has nothing to do the Taliban or for that matter Afghanistan. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Popular film director Ram Gopal Varma shared the same video on his twitter account with same description as in the post. It is most likely that this video gained traction on social media platforms following his tweet.
A Taliban guy trying to figure out how this American gun works 😳😳😳 pic.twitter.com/foNFOVyKFO
However, the video is actually a couple of years old, and the video does not feature the Taliban. Google search with relevant keywords yielded a 2019 Pakistani news article which reported the same incident, though the article features a video shot from another angle. As per this article, the video shows ‘a man from Abbottabad who died after he mistakenly shot himself in the head during celebratory gunfire before a wedding ceremony.’
Few other Pakistan-based news agencies which reported the incident back in 2019 can be read here and here. From these news articles, it is evident that the video is at least two years old and has nothing to do with the Taliban or for that matter Afghanistan.
To sum it up, old video of a man accidentally shooting himself in Pakistan is passed off attributing it to the Taliban.