Indian Army waving white flag? No viral clip is from 2019; shows Pak army retrieving soldier’s body
After India launched Operation Sindoor targeting terrorist bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), several unverified videos and images claiming to be related to the conflict went viral on social media. One of them is a video of a soldier waving a white flag as a sign of truce, as he carries the body of another soldier. Pro-Pakistani accounts claim that the soldier seen waving the white flag was an Indian soldier asking Pakistanis not to ‘bomb them’.
A fortnight after a terrorist attack in Pahalgam had killed 26 people, Indian Armed Forces hit nine sites in Pakistan and PoK from where attacks against India had been planned and directed. The Union ministry of defence described the action as “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, with no Pakistani military facilities having been targeted. Late on May 7, reports came in of heavy mortar shelling by Pakistan on forward villages along the Line of Control in Poonch and Rajouri areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
The video in question was shared, among others, by X user Dr Shama Junejo (@ShamaJunejo). The tweet garnered 1.1 million views. (Archive)
Another verified account, @Aadiiroy2, tweeted the same video with a caption in Urdu that translates to, “On the Line of Control, the Indian Army is waving white flags to retrieve the bodies of soldiers who have been sent to hell.” (Archive)
Several other X users also shared the video with the same claim. (Archives- 1, 2, 3)
Click to view slideshow.
Fact Check
Upon a relevant keyword search on Facebook, we found that the video could be traced back to September 2019. According to a Hindustan Times video report dated September 14, 2019, the video shows Pakistani rangers retrieving the bodies of their soldiers at the Line of Control after showing the white flag. Two Pakistani soldiers had been killed in retaliatory firing by the Indian Army on September 11, 2019. Pakistani troops retrieved the bodies after showing white flag.
The HT video report had the ANI watermark on it. We were able to find the ANI tweet from September 14, 2019, which also corroborated the HT report.
According to a The Hindu article dated September 15, 2019, the video was released by the Indian Army. Between September 10-11, 2019, one of the Pakistani soldiers killed by Indian troops was Ghulam Rasool of their Punjab Regiment. Rasool was a ‘Punjabi Muslim’ who belonged to Bahawalnagar in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Initially, Pakistani soldiers attempted to recover the body under the cover of intense ceasefire violations, but another Pakistani soldier was killed while doing so. Even after two days of repeated attempts, the Pakistani Army could not recover the bodies of their soldiers. Finally, on September 13, Pakistan’s Punjab Regiment soldiers raised the white flag and tried to recover the bodies. The white flag is raised to signal peace and truce. An Indian Express article from around the same time corroborates the chain of events.
The Press Bureau of India also released a fact-check debunking the viral claims about the video showing Indian troops waving the white flag.
Propaganda Alert
An old video from September 2019 of the #Pakistan Army raising white flag at LOC to recover…
Posted by PIB Fact Check on Wednesday 7 May 2025
Hence, a video from September 2019 of Pakistani troops waving a white flag as a truce to retrieve bodies of their soldiers is currently viral against the backdrop of the ongoing India-Pakistan conflict. Many pro-Pakistan accounts have shared the old video claiming that the Indian army was calling for a truce.
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