A video showing a collection of arms, ammunition and cash laid out on the ground has been circulating on social media over the past few weeks. Those sharing the video claim the arms were recovered in the Indian army's raid against militants in Manipur.
X user @TIgerNS3 posted the video on June 10, claiming that an armed forces raid led to the recovery of "big stocks of guns, arms and amunication with huge money from anti libration social elements of Manipur. #kuki terrorist". (Archive)
Nearly a month ago, X user Jitendra Pratap Singh (@jpsin1) had shared the video with a similar claim. The caption accompanying the video said, "Big Breaking. In Manipur, the Indian Army has recovered a huge cache of weapons and cash from militants. Take a look". (Archive)
Several other users shared the viral video with similar claims. Below are a few instances.
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Fact Check
In the viral clip, we noticed that the army camouflage uniform worn by the men had a BNRA logo. BNRA stands for Burma National Revolutionary Army, a relatively new military organisation in Myanmar established on September 9, 2023.
We found images of the BNRA insignia on the official Facebook page of the BNRA and compared these with the signage attached to the sleeves of the soldiers in the viral video. The two matched, confirming that it depicts the Burma National Revolutionary Army.
Additionally, towards the end of the video, we noticed a blue, red and green coloured flag with a white circle in the centre, with some figure drawn within it, in the frame. On running a reverse image search, we found that the flag belongs to the Chin National Defence Force (CNDF)—the armed wing of the Chin National Organisation. It is a rebel group that operates out of the Chin state in Myanmar, which shares borders with the Indian state of Manipur.
We also broke down the video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a Facebook post from April 24, which carried the same video. The caption has been written in the Mizo language and translates to, "CB group and their ancestors defeated 268 people in Falam village and seized weapons and money". CB group here likely refers to the Chin Brotherhood.
On probing further, we came across an April 10 Facebook post by a Myanmar-based media outlet, Khit Thit Media. The post carried the viral video and the caption in Burmese translates to: "Hundreds of thousands of weapons and ammunition seized in battle for Falam township... After the final attack and capture of the entire Falam township in Chin State on April 9, the Chin Nyinaung group has seized hundreds of thousands of weapons and ammunition from the Military Council..."
https://www.facebook.com/khitthitnews/videos/1416235459755587
Several other Myanmar-based news outlets also reported on this. These reports can be found here and here.
From the above findings, it is clear that the viral clip is from Myanmar. It has nothing to do with Manipur; social media claims linking it to the Indian state are false and baseless.
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