TV9 Bharatvarsh Aired Clip From Pakistan As Taliban Celebrating After Occupying Afghanistan

Taliban declared a complete seizure of Afghanistan's Kabul on 15 August. Amidst this, a video of men dancing with assault rifles is shared on social media, claiming this video is of Taliban militants celebrating after occupying Afghanistan.

Prashant Patel Umrao, a practising advocate at Supreme Court who has shared fake news multiple times, shared the video and captioned it, "Afghan Jalebi Original version, direct from Taliban."

Smita Prakash, the editor of news agency ANI, shared the video and captioned it, "What is this Taliban? No shame or what?".

Now, both the tweets are unavailable on Twitter.

TV9 Network's Hindi news channel, TV9 Bharatvarsh, aired the video claiming this was the Taliban celebrating after occupying Maidan Wardak province of Afghanistan.

Now, this part of the broadcast has been taken down from the channel's social media accounts.

The video has now turned into meme content that netizens have been sharing with different music.

The video is shared on Twitter;

The video is shared on Facebook.

Claim:

A group of men dancing with assault rifles are the Talibani militants celebrating after occupying Afghanistan.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian fact-check team verified the claim and found it false. The video is of a wedding celebration from the Bannu district from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan.

We did a Google reverse image search of different keyframes from the video, which led us to a YouTube video titled "DJ Bannu Dance". The video, which has instrumental music, was uploaded by a channel named 'Usman Khan' on 25 March 2021.

It is noteworthy that the Taliban began capturing Afghanistan following the removal of US military troops on 1 May. They managed to overtake the country's capital Kabul on 15 August. There seems no possibility that the video is of the Taliban celebrating after occupying Afghanistan because the video is already present on YouTube, dated March 2021.

We also found a tweet of a Pakistan-based journalist, Iftikhar Firdous, who lashed at news channel TV9 Bharatvarsh for airing a Pakistani wedding celebration video.

He captioned, "Unbelievable an Indian Channel is showing a viral video of marriage in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Dancers in the marriage are masquerading. The anchor is showing them as Taliban celebrating the take over of Maidan in Afghanistan. This is next level bullshit, lol."

A Facebook user Qasim Khan shared the TV9 Bharatvarsh video and captioned it in Urdu, whose English translation reads, "See the reporting of Indian media. Made a video of the Taliban celebration with a wedding video in Bannu. That's how media presents the bitter truth Lolz."

Then Qasim Khan's video was shared by another Facebook user Wahab Pakhtoon.

We went through Wahab's Facebook timeline and found that he resembles one of the men dancing in the video.

Fact-checking website Alt News contacted Wahab Pakhtoon, who confirmed that he is the man dancing in the video wearing a blue dress. He said, "The man in the blue suit is me. The video was shot on my phone at my cousin's wedding on 18 March 2021 in the Bannu district."

Evidently, a four-month-old video of men dancing in a Pakistani wedding is shared with a false claim that the video shows the Taliban celebrating after occupying Afghanistan.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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