This Image Doesn't Show the Crashed Army Helicopter in Arunachal Pradesh

The image shows an Indian Army helicopter which crash landed in Reasi, Jammu and Kashmir in 2020.

Fact-Check: The image is three years old and shows a crashed helicopter in Jammu and Kashmir.

(Photo:The Quint)

An old image of a crashed chopper has been shared by several news organisations and social media users following the crash of an Indian Army Aviation Cheetah helicopter in Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday, 16 March.

The helicopter was reported to have lost contact with the air traffic control (ATC) at around 9:15 am.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source:Twitter/Screenshot)

Who has shared it?: The news organisations that have shared the image include Zee Business, NewsBytes, Amar Ujala, Sakal, and Punjab Kesari. Several other social media users have also shared the claim and the archives can be seen here and here.

The truth: The image shows an Indian Army helicopter which crash landed following a technical snag, in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir on 3 February 2020.

How did we find that out: On conducting a reverse image search on the photograph, we were led to a report published by The Wire on 1 April 2022.

• The report carried the viral image but the caption said, "The Chetak helicopter of the Indian Army which crash landed following a technical snag, in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir" and the photo was attributed to news agency PTI.

• Taking a cue from this, we conducted a keyword search and found several news reports that talked about the incident. Some of these carried the viral image.

• We also looked for the image on PTI's photo archives and found the image from 3 February 2020.

A link to the archive can be found here.

(Source: PTI)

• We also found that the same image was used in 2022 after a helicopter crashed in Kedarnath and was fact-checked by The Quint's WebQoof team.

What happened in Arunachal Pradesh: A Cheetah helicopter of the Indian Army crashed near Mandala, west of Bomdila, in Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday, a defence spokesperson told PTI.

• The Arunachal Pradesh police said that "An Army chopper lost contact midway and could not be located while it was en route to Missamari from Senge village."

• No images of the crashed chopper were available at the time of publishing.

Conclusion: An old image from Jammu and Kashmir was shared as a recently crashed Indian Army helicopter in Arunachal Pradesh.

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