Authors
As India and Bangladesh celebrate Vijay Diwas on December 16 to commemorate India’s victory over Pakistan in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, photos of Kangana Ranaut with uniformed soldiers are being shared widely on Twitter. The Queen actor can be seen smiling and posing in the photographs with no one donning masks considered mandatory for COVID-19 prevention.
Social media users claimed that Ranaut spent the day celebrating Vijay Diwas with Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers. Newschecker found the images to be old and misleading.
Twitter fan account @fc_kangana shared four images of Ranaut with men in the BSF uniform which garnered over a thousand likes and over 200 retweets at last count. The archived link to the post can be seen here.
Factcheck/Verification
To check whether the viral images show Ranaut celebrating Vijay Diwas, Newschecker ran a reverse image search on one of the photos and found a link to a Hindustan Times news report dated February 2017.
The article titled, ‘I wanted to meet BSF jawans to promote Rangoon: Kangana Ranaut,’ carries the exact image as one of the viral images.
The image was reportedly captured when Ranaut visited the BSF Frontier Headquarter in Jammu to promote her film Rangoon which was shot in the backdrop of World War II.
Newschecker also found one of the other viral images in an India Today article through reverse image search.
In addition, a banner of the film Rangoon can be seen in the background which starred Kangana Ranaut, Saif Ali Khan, and Shahid Kapoor in lead roles.
India today’s article titled, ‘SEE PICS: Kangana Ranaut meets BSF jawans in Jammu, calls it an absolute honor,’ states, Ranaut was touched by the selfless and brave act of the BSF soldiers and that she ‘paid tribute to the martyrs who lost their lives in the line of duty.’
On investigating the official Twitter account of BSF, Newschecker found a tweet dated February 2017 where Ranaut can be seen in the exact same attire as in the viral images paying tribute to the martyred soldiers.
In addition, the Twitter handle @RangoonTheFilm carried similar pictures with #RangoonPromotions. On further checking the hashtag we came across more pictures front the same event held in Jammu in 2017.
Conclusion
The viral photos claiming that actor Kangana Ranaut celebrated Vijay Diwas with BSF soldiers are old and are being shared in the wrong context. The original images were taken in 2017 in Jammu at the promotional event for a film called Rangoon.
Result: Misplaced Context
Our Sources
BSF’s Tweet
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