Fact Check: This incident is two decades old and has no relation with the Indian Army

On 23 October 2019, a Facebook user named “Braje ki Nagariya” posted a video and wrote in his headline that “A bullet has been stuck in his head, yet he has a smile on his face”. Such is our Indian Army, Jai Hind’s Army”. This video is of a soldier who has been shot on his forehead. This video is being shared on social media with the claim that the person who is shot in his head is an Indian soldier. This footage has emerged online showing a solider having a bullet removed from his forehead with a pair of pliers. By the time the fact check was done, this video had received 14,000 responses. 

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Beginning the investigation, we searched for this video on Google using the keywords “Bullet in soldier head”. As a result, we found a YouTube video uploaded on 17th May 2013, captioned as “A Russian soldier has a bullet stuck in his forehead”. The same video was also uploaded on a YouTube channel called ‘Military Republic domain’ on 19th June 2013. The video’s title states, “A colleague of this Russian soldier removed the bullet from his forehead with a pair of pliers (2000)”. The watermark of the website called Live Leak can be seen in the video. The man who removed the bullet from the soldier’s forehead could be his colleague.

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In order to get more information about the above incident, we then searched for news regarding this incident. As a result, we received reports from the Daily Mail and Mirror UK, which described how this soldier cheated death as he had bullet lodged in his head. According to the reports, this clip is believed to have filmed during the war in Chechnya in 2000. The man who removed the bullet from the soldier’s forehead was possibly his colleague. 

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Conclusion: We have found the above post wrong after checking the facts. The soldier who was shot in the head is a Russian soldier, not an Indian soldier. The video is believed to have been shot in the year 2000 in Chechnya, Russia during the Second Chechen War.