Disturbing visuals of a child sitting on his grandfather's corpse and crying are viral falsely linking it to the recent terrorist attack in Baisaran Valley area in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
On April 22, 2025 terrorists opened fire on several tourists and locals gathered in the Baisaran meadows area of Pahalgam, Kashmir, killing 26 people and injuring several others. Termed one of the deadliest attack on civilians in India and Kashmir, the incident has shattered the relative calm in the valley and is set to hugely impact the recent surge in local tourism. Family members of the deceased have alleged that the attackers specifically targeted Hindu male tourists. The deceased list also include local guide and a foreign nationals.
The Indian Express reported that The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow group of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The viral video contains several still photos of a toddler sitting on top of a seemingly dead man. It also has short clips of the same child in a police van, crying for the dead man and being consoled by those around.
The video is being shared on X linking it to the April 22 attack with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "The only fault of this child is that he is a Hindu, which is why he lost his dad. And digital terrorists are also laughing on this child and making fun of him."
BOOM has previously fact-checked misinformation posted by the X handle @jpsin1.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral visuals of the toddler mourning his grandfather are from July 2020, not the recent April 22, 2025 attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir.
We ran a reverse image search on the visuals, and found a news report by Al Jazeera published on July 2, 2020 with the headline, 'Photo of toddler sitting on his grandfather’s body angers Kashmir.' The story carried the same photo as in the viral video. It further identified the child as three-year-old Aayad Khan, mourning his 65-year-old grandfather, Bashir Ahmed Khan, killed in an encounter between Indian security forces and terrorists in Sopore, Kashmir.
The story detailed that a terrorist group opened fire on a CRPF patrol in Sopore, killing one. Bashir Ahmed Khan was on his way to inspect a construction site when he was killed during the attack.
The Hindustan Times story, published on July 1, 2020, reported that a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper and Khan were killed in the terrorist attack. However, this was countered by the victim’s family, who accused Indian security forces of killing the civilian Khan during the gunfight with terrorists.
The same video of the toddler being consoled in a police van was posted by news agency ANI on X on July 1, 2020 with the caption, “Jammu & Kashmir Police console a 3-year-old child after rescuing him during a terrorist attack in Sopore and take him to his mother. The child was sitting beside his dead relative during the attack.”
The interaction in the viral video matches with the visuals in the video below.
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