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| - Fact Check: Chilling video of snake coiled around sniper is NOT from Arunachal, it's from Indonesia
AFWA's investigation found that the viral video is not from India at all, but from Indonesia.
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India Today Fact Check
This video is not from India at all. It’s from Indonesia.
A sniper lay still covered in camouflage in a forest at an elevation, aiming into the distance. What made the scene chilling was that a snake had coiled itself around the sniper and the gun. But the sniper looked unaffected.
This video, allegedly from around Arunachal Pradesh, has been widely shared online. Rohit Upadhyay, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media head for Delhi shared it as well and wrote, “Indian Army Sniper Armed With Sako TRG 42 .338 Lapua Magnum Sniper Rifle Along A King Cobra Somewhere Near LAC At Arunachal Pradesh”. The archived version of this video can be seen here.
Even Zee News Marathi reported on this video, writing it was from Arunachal Pradesh’s border.
AFWA’s investigation found that the viral video is not from India at all, but from Indonesia.
AFWA PROBE
Upon reverse-searching the keyframes of the video, we found it in a September 18 video report by the Indonesian news outlet Tribun Timur.
As per the YouTube video’s description, the person seen in the video was part of the Indonesian National Armed Forces, also known as the TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia). The video was credited to a TikTok user @luxydwipriyanto0.
Multiple Indonesian news websites also cited the TikTok account as a source while reporting the story.
On TikTok, we found that this video was shared with the hashtags “Kopasgat TNI Au” and “TNI Indonesia”. Kopasgat TNI Au is the infantry and special forces corps of the Indonesian Air Force. However, we couldn’t independently verify if this video showed this particular branch of the Indonesian Air Force.
We found another similar video of a person covered with grass, standing while holding a gun on the same TikTok account.
Using keyword search, we found an Instagram and a Facebook account that most likely belonged to the same TikTok user. Upon comparing the kind of content shared on these three handles, one can see many similarities.
The account mentions the name Luxy Dwi Priyanto on Instagram and Facebook. In 2016, the person running the accounts had written in a Facebook post that he was associated with the ‘Special Forces Corp Command’.
In most of his posts, he can be seen wearing a military uniform. In one of the videos shared by him, some people can be seen jumping out of an aircraft with parachutes.
While we cannot say with certainty that this is the person in the viral video, it is likely. We also couldn’t find any evidence that this video shows an Indian Army soldier. Thus, we conclude that this video from Indonesia has been falsely shared with the claim it shows an Indian soldier in Arunachal Pradesh.
(With inputs from Mayank Anandan)
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