A photo from a yet to be released movie is being shared with a false claim that it shows the Indian Army capturing soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Arunachal Pradesh.
The image is being shared as several media outlets in India reported on October 8 that 200 Chinese soldiers were intercepted by the Indian defence forces in a clash in Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh. Hindustan Times quoting Indian officials reported that the "altercation took place due to differences in perception of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border dividing the two countries." The report further quoted Zhao Lijian, spokesperson, Chinese foreign ministry as saying that he was not aware of any "relevant information" about the incident.
The Hindi caption circulating with the image on Facebook translates to, "Rahul Gandhi will never tweet that the Indian Army captured more than one hundred Chinese soldiers in Arunachal, then they were released only after the meeting between the Chinese army commander and the Indian commander...This is changing India"
(Original text in Hindi - राहुल गांधी कभी इस पर ट्वीट नहीं करेगा कि भारतीय सेना ने अरुणाचल में डेढ़ सौ से ज्यादा चीनी सैनिकों को बंदी बना लिया, फिर जब चीन के सेना के कमांडर और भारतीय कमांडर के बीच में मीटिंग हुई उसके बाद ही उन्हें छोड़ा गया)
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The mis-captioned image is likely to have been spread by TheZaiduLeaks handle on Twitter which BOOM has fact checked several times for spreading disinformation. You can read out fact checks here
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the image is a scene from a yet to be released Bollywood movie called 'L.A.C.' which was shot in Kargil, India. A reverse image search on the image showed the same image used by Chinese news sites in a report about a movie being made in Bollywood about the Galwan clashes. The sites had used some more photos from the movie shooting and detailed the alleged inaccuracies in them.
Using this as a cue, we ran a search on YouTube and found that a video uploaded by a channel called, Martial Art Ladakh, which carried a video of the same scene in the viral photo.
At the counter of 5.39 in the below video one can see the same actor in a red turban holding another actor dressed in the blue camouflage uniform of as worn by PLA soldiers.
The description of the video reads, 'lac movie Shooting in kargil Ladakh Behind the scenes'
Screenshot from the YouTube video
We compared the viral image with screenshots from the YouTube video and found several similarities.
In some sections of the YouTube video we noticed a ticker saying 'Choreography Tony Jaa (Zakir)'. A search for Tony Jaa on Facebook led us to a martial arts instructor from Ladakh who had called out a post with the viral image saying in Hindi, "What has Godi media turned LAC film into".
