The skeleton in this picture is not real and does not show an Indian soldier from the 1965 war - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 4, 2021
A photo of a skeleton with a gun is being shared on social media with a claim that it shows the remains of an Indian soldier who fought in the 1965 war. It is also being claimed that when the remains were found three months after the war, the soldier’s fingers were on the trigger. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo showing the remains of an Indian soldier who fought in the 1965 war.
Fact: The skeleton in the picture is not real. It is a model created by ‘Dilip Sarkar MBE’ in 2017. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the image was run through Yandex Reverse Image Search, similar photos were found in the search results. In the description of the photos, some of them mentioned that it is a model. It can be observed in one of the photos that the model is credited to ‘Dilip Sarkar MBE’.
So, when we searched on the Facebook profile of ‘Dilip Sarkar MBE’, the same photo was found to be posted by him in January 2018. He wrote that the model was made using the vintage Airfix 1/6 scale skeleton and Dragon Action figures bits and was for a magazine article.
The same photo was previously debunked by ‘Teyit’ in 2018 when the photo went viral with the claim that it shows a Turkish soldier. ‘Teyit’ reported that Dilip Sarkar clarified to them that the model was created by him in 2017 and represents an ‘Alman’ (English translation – German/Dutch) soldier. The step-by-step creation of the model can be seen in the ‘Military Modelling’ magazine.
To sum it up, the skeleton is not real and does not show an Indian soldier from the 1965 war.