Animated video goes viral as satellite view of CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat’s chopper crash

The digital head of News 7 Tamil confirmed to Fact Crescendo that the viral video was created using VFX. The video does not show the satellite view of the helicopter crash in Coonoor.

India’s first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat died on 8th December, after a military chopper carrying him crashed in Tamil Nadu. Indian Air Force has tweeted that his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 other persons on board have also died in the accident.

As soon as the news broke on 8 December 2021, some social media users started sharing old and unrelated images and video as real footages of the incident. You can read the fact checks debunking such content here and here.

Users have come up with several theories about the cause of death while tri-service commission is probing the matter.

Amidst this, a video is circulating on social media claiming to show the original satellite view of the helicopter carrying CDS Gen. Bipin Rawat in Coonoor. The video shows an aerial view of a helicopter flying and then crashing into the hills. 

The caption of the viral video states “Satellite video of helicopter crash in Conoor. It appears the tail rotor got snapped and the chopper suddenly turned in reverse direction and crashed within 2 seconds. No reaction time.”

Facebook Post | Archive Link 

This video is widely being circulated on Facebook.

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ALSO READ: Old Video from Syria went viral as CDS Bipin Rawat’s Chopper Crash

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Fact Check-

We started our investigation by carefully observing the viral video, where we notice News 7 Tamil’s logo on the lower right corner. We can also see flames in the video as the chopper crashes into the hills. These flames looks more like digitally created than real.

Further, we could also see Tamil text overlaid on the video along with their watermark. Keeping this in mind, we ran a keyword search on YouTube, which led us to the channel of News 7 Tamil Prime. 

We found the same video published by this channel on 8 December 2021 which the caption as “How did the Coonoor helicopter crash happen? – Graphical display”. The caption of the original video clearly mentions that the video is a graphical representation of the helicopter crash in Coonoor.

We also found another live stream of the video published by the same news channel on 10^th of December. They did not mention in the bulletin that it shows the satellite imagery of the crash. This representation was graphically created to show the route that the helicopter had taken on the day of the accident. The video just tries to explain how the crash must have taken place.

Further, Fact Crescendo contacted the digital head of News 7 Tamil, Sugitha who confirmed to us that the viral claim is false. The video aired by the channel was created by visual effects (vfx).

The government has constituted a triservice enquiry commission led by IAF officers to investigate the crash.

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ALSO READ: Old Photo from Colombia shared as remains of the crashed chopper Carrying CDS General Bipin Rawat

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Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the viral video on social media to be False. The viral video does not show the satellite view of the helicopter crash carrying CDS General Bipin Rawat. A Tamil News channel who clearly mention that the video is a graphical representation of how the crash at Coonoor might have happened published the video.

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