On 15th August, the Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar published a post on X claiming that an MI-171 helicopter of the Indian Air Force crashed in Nigeria leading to the death of 26 soldiers and leaving eight as injured. The post was published on X at 11:52 AM. Dainik Bhaskar published a photograph of a crashed aircraft with the tweet insinuating it was from a recent incident.
After less than 15 minutes, it published another tweet claiming an Air Force spokesperson said MI-171 Helicopter flew from Jungeru on Monday and crashed during a rescue mission. Though it does not use “Indian Air Force” in the text it uses the hashtag “#IndianAirForce”.
There was a link in these posts that was redirected to the report of a helicopter crash in Nigeria. Interestingly, in the report, there was no mention of the Indian Air Force. The report noted that AFP reported 23 soldiers including three officers and 3 JTF died in the crash. It was taking 11 dead bodies and 7 injured from the conflict zone. It has been reported that the helicopter crashed due to firing by the assailants with whom the security forces were fighting.
Soon after the fake posts, the government’s fact-checking agency PIB Fact Check refuted the claims and said the posts by Dainik Bhaskar were fake. It categorically said that the crashed helicopter was not of the Indian Air Force.
.@DainikBhaskar द्वारा एक पोस्ट में दावा किया जा रहा है कि भारतीय वायुसेना का MI-171 हेलीकॉप्टर नाइजीरिया में क्रैश हुआ जिसमें 26 सैनिकों की मौत और 8 सैनिक घायल हुए।#PIBFactCheck
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) August 15, 2023
✔️यह दावा फ़र्ज़ी है।
✔️ क्रैश होने वाला हेलीकॉप्टर @IAF_MCC का नहीं था। pic.twitter.com/OQANjaPqWb
OpIndia reverse-searched the image used in the first tweet. We noticed that the image was almost five years old. It was clicked on 4th October 2018 by photographer Philip Ojisua for The Guardian.
The photograph was of one of the two Nigeria Air Force F-7NI jets that crashed after a mid-air collision in Katampe Hills in Abuja.
The photograph in the second tweet was also not an Indian Air Force helicopter. It was a MiL-17 with the Russian Aerospace Forces and the photograph was picked up from Wikipedia. The photograph was clicked by Russian Military Photographer Vitaly V Kuzmin and uploaded in August 2015 on Wikipedia.
Dainik Bhaskar deleted both tweets after PIB’s rebuttal. However, they later shared a corrigendum, admitting their mistake.
भूल सुधार
— Dainik Bhaskar (@DainikBhaskar) August 15, 2023
नाइजीरियाई वायुसेना के हेलिकॉप्टर हादसे से जुड़ी एक खबर की सोशल पोस्ट में 15 अगस्त 2023 को गलती से भारतीय वायुसेना का हेलिकॉप्टर लिख दिया गया था। नाइजीरिया में भारतीय वायुसेना का कोई हेलिकॉप्टर दुर्घटनाग्रस्त नहीं हुआ है। इस भूल के लिए दैनिक भास्कर की टीम को खेद है।… pic.twitter.com/ytqcBSZIW3
“On August 15, 2023, in a social post related to the helicopter accident of the Nigerian Air Force, it was mistakenly written that the helicopter belonged to the Indian Air Force. No helicopter of the Indian Air Force has crashed in Nigeria. Dainik Bhaskar team regrets for this mistake”, they wrote in the post and added a link of their corrected article.
