Amidst the turmoil with regard to the evacuation of Indian students stuck in war-torn Ukraine and the barrage of misinformation that followed, a fresh claim is widespread on social media.
Two images have gone viral with the claim that students from Pakistan and Turkey carried the Indian national flag to escape Ukraine.
The students in the image below have been identified as Pakistanis.
Posted by Puja Rajput on Sunday, March 13, 2022
Similarly, another image has been used to claim Turkish students used the Indian flag to escape.
I love my India ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????.
Posted by Archana Gupta BJP on Thursday, March 3, 2022
Fact-check
A simple reverse image search reveals that both the photos show students from India.
Image 1
This image is dated February 26 and was found in PTI archives and is captioned, “More batches of Indian students enter Hungary from Ukrainian side at Zahony crossing, travelling onward to Budapest for return to India by AI flight.”
The picture was also used in a report by India Today on the evacuation of Indian students in Sumy.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had also uploaded a video of the students.
Image 2
This image was found on a video report by India Today titled, ‘First batch of Indian students leave for Ukraine border‘. The report is from Februray 25.
Images of Indian students were shared to falsely claim they are students from Pakistan and Turkey who carried the Indian flag to safely escape from Ukraine. It is noteworthy that some Indian students reportedly said that Pakistani and Turkish students indeed used the Indian flag to escape. Alt News has not verified the claim.
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