Media miseport on Pahalgam: ‘Last video of Vinay Narwal’ is not of slain Navy officer, shows some other couple

At least 26 people were killed in the picturesque Baisaran valley near Pahalgam in Anantnag district on April 22 in the deadliest terror attack targetting tourists in Kashmir in recent times. According to survivors’ accounts, three to four men in army fatigues descended from the dense Pine forests around 2 pm and fired indiscriminately at civilians enjoying their time in the lush meadows of what is popularly known as ‘Mini Switzerland’. The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow group of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, according to sources in the central agencies.

Lieutenant Vinay Narwal of the Indian Navy, who was on a trip to Kashmir with his wife Himanshi, was among the victims of the attack. They had got married on April 16. Amid the nationwide outrage and condemnation following the incident, a heart-rending picture of the lifeless body of Narwal with Himanshi sitting next to it went viral.

While the entire country was still trying to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy, several media houses, websites, and social media users, including some politicians, started sharing a video of dancing couple claiming it to be the last video of Vinay Narwal and his wife, Himanshi.

Among those who shared the video were media houses NDTV, News18, IBC News, News24, Times Now, The Press Free Journal, Live Mint, Times Bull and OneIndia Tamil. All of them ran the video describing it as the final video of former Indian Navy Lieutenant Vinay Narwal dancing with his wife, Himanshi.

Dainik Jagran , TV9 Kannada  and One India Hindi on YouTube reported on this video as Narwal and his wife Himanshi dancing.

Haryana 24 Updates , Zee Telugu News , NTV Telugu also shared the video as YouTube Shorts with similar claims.

Fact Check

Alt News found that after this video went viral, a couple named Yashika Sharma and Ashish Sahrawat released a video on Instagram claiming that the 19-second viral video was theirs. In the video statement, Yashika says that she is very much alive and she was not in Kashmir. She further says that she did not know that all the news channels shared her video with such a claim. She refuted the widespread claims that the video showed the late Vinay Narwal and his wife, Himanshi.

Further, questioning the Indian media, Yashika says in her statement, “I don’t know where this video came from. I don’t know how the Indian press works. We are worried since morning, we are getting calls, me and my family are all worried. We express our condolences to the victim’s family. But we are alive, we are not them. Just think about those with whom all this has happened; how will they feel? The incident happened with them and we are in the video, while we are alive.” She also requested Instagram users to report the video.

We looked at some photos and videos present in Yashika’s profile. In this, a reel was posted four days ago from the same place where the viral video was shot.

In a photo shared on her profile, Yashhika Sharma is wearing the same clothes that she is wearing in the viral video.

In a report, Dainik Bhaskar stated that the Narwal family from Haryana, too, had refuted the claims that it’s Vinay and Himanshi in the video.

We have reached out to the content creators for further information on the video. This report will be updated as and when they get back to us.

To sum up, media outlets used a video in their reports without any verification and falsely claimed that the couple dancing in it was the slain Navy Lieutenant Vinay Narwal and his wife Himanshi.

The post Media miseport on Pahalgam: ‘Last video of Vinay Narwal’ is not of slain Navy officer, shows some other couple appeared first on Alt News.

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