A video showing a house collapsing amid a loud blast is being falsely shared on social media as footage of Indian Armed Forces bombing the house of a minority community in Manipur.
BOOM found that the video is old and unrelated to any army action. The footage is from 2023, when a house in Churachandpur was destroyed during the ethnic clash in Manipur.
Three years since the ethnic violence between the Hindu Meitei and predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribes in Manipur broke out, 258 people have been killed, and 60,000 people have been displaced.
The Claim:
The 25-second video is being shared claiming that Indian Army Forces are destroying houses of minority communities in Manipur.
Archive available here.
What We Found:
1) Old Video from 2023
A reverse image search traced it to a post from Facebook handle @Manipur Times on July 26, 2024. The caption mentions that the footage is from the 2023 violence in Manipur.
2) News reports from July 21, 2024
Taking a cue from this, we ran a keyword search, which led to a report published after the video first surfaced in July 2024. The owner, Naorem Ibomcha Meitei, said that his three-storey house in Churachandpur had allegedly been destroyed with explosives by Kuki militants. Although the exact date the video was recorded remains unknown, Ibomcha said it was filmed sometime between May and September 2023.