Old Video of Indian-Chinese Troops Brawling Shared As Tawang Clash

An old video of Indian and Chinese soldiers engaged in a fist fight is being shared with the false claim of being from the recent clashes that took place in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh.

BOOM found that the video is at least two years old, and shows a brawl between the Indian and Chinese troops in Sikkim.

In an address to the Lok Sabha on December 13, 2022, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh informed that the Indian Army resisted attempts made by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to change the status quo of the LAC (Line of Actual Control) in Arunachal Pradesh during the early hours of December 9.

The news of the first major clash between the two sides since Galwan in June 2020, was reported on the evening of December 12.

Several videos are going viral on social media purporting to depict said clashes. One of those videos shows a high altitude brawl between the troops where they are seen fighting with their bare hands. The video is being shared with the claim that the Indian Army was able to push back 300 PLA soldiers with the utmost ease despite the Chinese having more troops.

The caption on Facebook reads, "More than 300 Chinese chickens came to Tawang, Arunachal at a height of 17000 feet with full planning to capture the Indian post on the border, But it seems that Chinese had forgotten Galwan, so once again the Indian jawans without weapons broke each and every bone, special care was taken that no Chinese should die. Now all those chickens are hospitalized, bones are getting attached, and yes, this is the official statement of the Indian Army. And the incident is of 9th December. Jai Hind"

(Original caption in Hindi: 300 से अधिक चीनी चूजे पूरी प्लानिंग के साथ 17000 फिट की ऊंचाई पर अरुणाचल के तवांग में भारतीय पोस्ट कब्जा करने आए थे बॉर्डर पर , पर लगता ह की चिंके गलवान को भूल गए थे , इसलिए भारतीय जाबांजो ने एक बार फिर से बिना हथियारों के एक एक कि हड्डियां तोड़ी , बाकायदा इस बात का खास ध्यान रखा गया कि कोई चिंका मर न जाए ।अब वो सारे चिंके होस्पिटलाइज ह , हड्डियां जुड़वा रहे ह , ओर हा ये भारतीय सेना का आधिकारिक बयान ह । व घटना 9 दिसम्बर की ह । जय हिंद)

Click here to view.

Dainik Bhaskar also shared these old visuals in their article about the recent Tawang clashes.

Click here to view and here for the archive.

The claim is also being circulated widely on Twitter.

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FACT-CHECK

BOOM found that the undated video is at least two years old, since the clip has been reported by several news outlets in June 2020.

We searched for the video using reverse image search on Yandex and found that the video's earliest version was uploaded on 22 June, 2020 on Instagram by the page @bhariyadefence.

Taking a cue from this, we used related keywords to look for the video and found that NDTV had reported the incident too while sharing the same video.

The video was uploaded following the violent clashes between the Indian and Chinese armies in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh, that ended up killing 20 Indian soldiers.

The NDTV report, however, mentions that the video is undated and that "it is not clear when the video was shot."

BOOM could not independently verify when the incident took place, but it dates back to at least 2020.