The viral photos show the same soldier, Rahul Sulgekar, not two martyred brothers
A post featuring three photos is going viral on social media (here, here, and here). Two of the photos show soldiers in army uniforms, while the third shows a man standing in front of a flower-decked coffin, flanked by security personnel, paying his respects. The post claims that the photos show two brothers serving in the Indian Army who were martyred in a recent border clash. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: The photos show two brothers serving in the Indian Army who were martyred in border clash.
Fact: The photos do not show two brothers who were martyred in border clash. The first two photos feature the same soldier, Rahul Bhairu Sulgekar, who was martyred in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, in November 2019; his brother, who is also in the Army, is safe and sound, as confirmed by Rahul Sulgekar’s father to Aaj Tak. The third photo is from the tribute ceremony for BSF Sub-Inspector Mohammad Imtiaz, following his martyrdom in cross-border firing on May 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
A Google Lens search of the first photo, showing a man in an army uniform with his hands folded, led to multiple media reports (here, here) identifying him as Rahul Bhairu Sulgekar, a 22-year-old soldier from Uchgaon, Kolhapur district, Maharashtra. According to reports, Rahul was martyred during an encounter with terrorists in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir, on the night of 07 November 2019. The viral photo appears edited, with a smile added to the original. He had joined the Maratha Light Infantry four years earlier, and his father is a retired soldier, while his elder brother also serves in the Army.
We repeated the process to verify the second photo, showing a man in an army uniform with a red background, and found (here, here) that it also shows Rahul Sulgekar. This confirms that both photos feature the same person, so the claim that two brothers were martyred is false.
Rahul Sulgekar’s father, Bhairu Sulgekar, confirmed to Aaj Tak that the photo is indeed of Rahul. He also stated that Rahul’s brother is safe and sound, and the claims of his martyrdom are fake.
We found that the third photo is from the tribute ceremony for BSF Sub-Inspector Mohammad Imtiaz, who was martyred in cross-border firing with Pakistan on 11 May 2025 during Operation Sindoor. This confirms that the photo is unrelated to martyr soldier Rahul Sulgekar.
To sum up, the viral photos show the same soldier, Rahul Sulgekar, not two martyred brothers.