On May 14, Indian security forces conducted a significant counter-insurgency operation near New Samtal village in Manipur’s Chandel district, close to the India-Myanmar border. Acting on specific intelligence, an Assam Rifles patrol encountered heavy fire from suspected insurgents, prompting a retaliatory response that resulted in the deaths of 10 militants dressed in camouflage uniforms.
Subsequent combing operations led to the recovery of a substantial cache of arms and ammunition, including seven AK-47 rifles, an M4 rifle, an RPG launcher, four single-barrel breech-loading rifles and various other war-like stores.
In the above context, a video is widely shared on social media in which one can see caches of arms and money.
The video is shared with a caption suggesting that it is of the caches of arms and money that the Indian army found in the counter-insurgency operation.
A social media user shared the video with a caption that reads, “In Manipur, the Indian Army has recovered a massive cache of weapons and cash from militants, take a look.”
SouthCheck found that the claim is misleading. Even though a substantial cache of arms was found, the video is from Myanmar and has no relation to the Indian army or Manipur.
On closely observing the video, at around 35 seconds, we can see that the armed personnel near the seized property had ‘BNRA’ written on their uniforms.
We searched on Google and found that BNRA stands for Burma National Revolutionary Army, an armed resistance organisation. The organisation was earlier named as Myanmar Royal Dragon Army and was later renamed BNRA in 2023.
On a Google reverse image search using this information, we found that the video was also shared by multiple Facebook pages from Myanmar.
The video was shared in an FB post, dated April 15. Since the video is old, we can ascertain that it is not related to the recent Indian security forces’ counter-insurgency operation in Manipur.
We found that a similar video was shared by a Myanmar-based media organisation on April 10. The video was shared with a caption that was written in Burmese, but some of the English texts that were written in it suggested words like Burma National Revolutionary Army (BNRA) or Burmese Revolutionary Technical Front.
We further found that an image similar to the screenshot of the viral video was shared by a Burmese news channel. The news associated with the image suggested that on April 9, the Chin National Front announced that it had taken control of Falam town in Chin State, Myanmar, following military operations that began in November 2024.
We further found that Myanmar Now had also reported on the incident on April 9. The report suggested the Chin Brotherhood alliance seized the Myanmar military’s final hilltop base in Falam, Chin State, after a five-month offensive, gaining full control of the town and compromising junta supply routes.
Therefore, we can ascertain that the viral claim is misleading.
