Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
Claim
Viral video claims to show armed Maoist rebel soldiers going underground to launch revolt.
Fact
Viral video shows behind the scenes clip from music video shoot of a song by Prakash Saput.
A 33-second video allegedly showing the rebel Maoist soldiers going underground for another revolt is going viral on TikTok. The video goes on to claim that the renegade Maoists are going back to jungle “after a fall out with” Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who is still known by his war-era nom de guerre ‘Prachanda’.
CPN-Maoist party led by current Prime Minister Dahal had launched a decade-long underground armed revolt from 1996 to 2006 and later joined the mainstream politics after signing a peace deal in 2005.
TikTok user @bambahadursaru123 posted a video showing women and men donned in combat fatigue and red bandana and playing among themselves with guns and walkie-talkie. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Nepal is almost sure to plunge into another civil war. The Maoist cadres who are against Prachanda have started going back to the jungle.” In the background, a song titled ‘Kasle Vanchha Kranti Safal Hundaina’ which translates to ‘Who says the revolution won’t be successful?’”
The video posted on December 22 has garnered 17.1k likes, 244 users have shared it and 838 users have commented on it.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several key frames and conducted reverse searches on them. However, the search didn’t yield any relevant results.
We, then, analysed the video and noticed that the video showed behind the scenes footage of a music video related to the people’s war. Taking a clue from the video, we conducted several searches on YouTube by using several Nepali relevant keywords. The search led us to a short video, dated December 23, 2023, published on a YouTube channel named ‘secret story Nepal’. The video frame exactly matched the viral video.
On checking the video description, we found that the video features Nepali model Anjali Adhikari and it showed behind the scenes footage from a shooting of a music video by popular Nepali folk singer Prakash Saput related to the people’s war. In the video, we can also hear model Adhikari saying, “Phone is working.” We also checked a website named ‘Artist Nepal’ and found that the woman donning armed soldier combat seen in the viral video is model Adhikari.
Further, we searched the status of Communist Party of Nepal led by Netra Bikram Chand (Biplav) and found an article published on Record Nepal dated December 15, 2020. The article noted that Chand first broke away from the Prachanda-led Maoist party in 2012 and then from the Mohan Baidya-led Maoist in 2013 to form his own party in 2014 to launch a unified rebellion.
Then, we found several articles (here, here) published in March 2021 confirming that the government under KP Sharma Oli signed a peace accord with the then outlawed Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal after the latter agreed to renounce violence. Since then, the Chand-led Maoists have not talked about going back to the jungle to launch an armed rebellion.
Conclusion
No, the viral video doesn’t show Maoist PLA soldiers going back to the jungle to launch another armed rebellion. The video actually shows behind the scenes footage from the shooting of a song by Nepali singer Prakash Saput.
Result: False
Sources
Secretary Story Nepal/YouTube, December 23, 2023
Aljazeera , March 4, 2021
The Himalayan Times, March 5, 2021
Artist Nepal
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become more essential today than ever before.
