An old video of senior Indian Army officers walking out of a press conference is viral with a false claim that they did so after declaring they were incapable of fighting a war with Pakistan.
BOOM found that the video from a March 2025 press conference held in Chandigarh after a Colonel Pushpinder Singh Bath was allegedly assaulted over car parking.
India has come down heavily on Pakistan following a terrorist attack on tourists in Pahalgam, Kashmir which killed 26 people and injuring several others, including locals and a foreign national. The Resistance Front, an alleged shadow organisation of the Pakistan backed Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group has since claimed responsibilty for the attack. In response, India has made heavy handed diplomatic moves, including suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, expelling Pakistani military advisors and diplomats and has revoked visas issued to Pakistani nationals.
The viral video shows senior uniformed army and police officials leaving even as a man shouts "what is the Indian army afraid of?". The video is viral with caption claiming, "Indian Army generals walked out of the meeting. They said We are not capable of fighting a war against Pakistan. Modi still wants war, but his army isn't capable of fighting. This is their true reality of 🇮🇳"
Fact-check
BOOM found that the video is older than the Pahalgam attack and unrelated to the current issue.
We first ran a reverse image search on several keyframes from the video and found posts on Instagram and Facebook identifying it a press conference by Punjab police.
A Instagram channel Pathankot Update uploaded the same video on March 26, 2025 with the caption, "Yesterday Press Conference Incident. DGP Punjab & Army Officals Press Conference" indicating that the video was from March 25.
Using this, we ran a keyword search for "march press conference punjab police" and found an Instagram post uploaded by Punjab Police which matched the location in the viral video. In the video, Lt. General Mohit Wadhwa can be heard saying that the press conference is about an assault on a serving Colonel Pushpinder Singh Bath by some Punjab police personnel.
We then used the above information and the visual of army officers walking out in the viral video and ran a keyword search in Punjabi which led us to the same video uploaded on March 25, 2025 by former minister Shiromani Akali Dal leader and Bikram Singh Majithia on Facebook.
In his post, Majithia praises a Man Aman Singh Chinna for "persistently asking questions".
A search on X led us to Chinna's profile where he uploaded the same video on March 25, 2025.
In his post, Chinna says in a press conference about the assault on the Colonel (Bath), senior army officers refused to take questions from the media and walked out after only reading out a statement. His question "what is the army afraid of?" heard in the video is regarding their refusal to take questions on the attack.
We also found news reports from March on the assault on Colonel Bath and his son and the press conference seen in the viral video. According to NDTV Colonel Bath and his son were attacked by a group of men following a dispute over car parking.
The full video of the press briefing including the viral clip can be seen below as uploaded by Government of Punjab’s official YouTube channel on March 25, 2025