Amid escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, a video began making the rounds on social media showing an Indian Army soldier beating a civilian with sticks. Those sharing the clip claimed that locals in Kashmir got into a fight with the Indian army following the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.

Sharing the clip on Instagram, one person wrote, “Kashmiri locals fighting with Indian Army. And yes it’s April 2025 and after Pahalgam terrorist attack.”

India Today Fact Check, however, found that this video predates the Pahalgam attack. The video is from August 2022, when Indian army personnel had beaten up a civilian in Srinagar.

OUR PROBE

Reverse-searching keyframes from the viral video led us to a news report about this incident from August 22, 2022. According to it, Indian Army personnel hit a civilian with sticks at Nowgam Chowk in Srinagar. This makes it clear that the video predates the Pahalgam attack by almost three years.

We then found multiple news reports about this incident from 2022. As per reports, some uniformed soldiers beat up a civilian after they got into a minor fight in Srinagar. Following the incident, the Nowgam Police Station registered a case under sections 323, 341 of the IPC against the soldiers on August 18, 2022.

“On Monday afternoon, an incident came to notice wherein some Army personnel in uniform reportedly beat up a civilian, while other personnel present also got involved in a minor fight at the Nowgam chowk,” the Srinagar Police said in a statement.

In the video, we can see two soldiers pulling out the driver of a load carrier and hitting his head with a stick. During the altercation, another civilian could be seen trying to rescue the person.

At the time, many had shared the video of the incident on social media platforms. In one such post, we found another video of the incident shot from a different angle.

It is thus clear that the video of soldiers beating up a civilian in Srinagar predates the Pahalgam attack, and is therefore unrelated to it.

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