Claim: A video shows the Pakistan Army sneaking away bodies of the soldiers killed in the March 2025 operation against the BLA following the Jaffar Express hijacking.
Fact: The video predates the Jaffar Express hijacking and appeared online as early as March 2024.
On 14 March 2025, X (formerly Twitter) user @jpsin1 posted (archive) a video showing military men transporting bodies of slain soldiers.
@jpsin1 — a Finland-based “supporter” of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — wrote the following caption:
“अंधेरे में मीडिया से छुपा के पाकिस्तान सेना ट्रेन हाईजैक में मारे गए अपने सैनिकों के शव को ले गई किसी ने पीछे से छुपाकर वीडियो बनाया सोचिए जो सेना अपने ही सैनिकों की शहादत को अस्वीकार कर दे वह सेना कितनी नीच सेना है
[Pakistan Army took away the bodies of its soldiers killed in train hijacking in the dark, hiding from the media. Someone made a video by hiding from behind. Just think, how despicable is an army that denies the martyrdom of its own soldiers.]”
Multiple other accounts, apparently from India and Afghanistan, also shared the clip with similar captions here, here, here, and here.
The Jaffar Express hijacking
The claim emerged after the separatist militant group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked the Peshawar-bound Jaffar Express “in [the] Dhadar area of Bolan Pass” in Balochistan, on 11 March 2025, according to the state-run Radio Pakistan.
The nine-coach train was travelling from Quetta to Peshawar via the Punjab province and had around 450 passengers, Quetta Railways Controller Muhammad Kashif told CNN. Its front portion was attacked first, grounding it to a halt, and its driver — who was initially reported dead — emerged alive.
The BLA demanded the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing persons it claims have been abducted, failing which it would execute the hostages.
In its statement, the Pakistan Army’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said, “The terrorists, after blowing up the railway track, took control of the train and held the passengers hostage including women, children and elderly, using them as human shields.”
The Pakistan Army “successfully eliminated all 33 terrorists” who “took the lives of 21 innocent hostages” as the face-off with the BLA concluded, but “4 brave security forces‘ soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice and embraced shahadat [martyrdom]”, the ISPR added.
“Intelligence reports have unequivocally confirmed that the attack was orchestrated and directed by terrorist ring leaders operating from Afghanistan,” the statement read.
ISPR Director-General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry was quoted in a report as saying the Pakistan Army, Air Force, Frontier Corps (FC), and the Special Services Group (SSG) were part of the operation.
Days later, however, Chaudhry updated the death toll, saying the number had risen to 31, according to Reuters. He had earlier said 354 hostages were safely rescued.
On the other hand, the BLA, which is a proscribed ethnonationalist militant organisation, claimed otherwise, saying it escaped with 214 hostages, including military personnel, and executed all of them.
There were over 150 security personnel aboard, “official sources who did not have permission to speak on the record” confirmed to The Guardian, which added that the BLA had even offered a “prisoner exchange”.
Contrary to the military’s statement, the group asserted that it had released a number of the hostages. Soch Fact Check could not independently verify either party’s claims about the number of hostages and casualties.
A passenger who managed to escape shortly after the BLA attack on the Jaffar Express told the media that the militants “separated women and asked them to leave” and “spared [the] elders”.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has accused India of being behind the hijacking in Pakistan. These comments were also echoed by the Pakistan Army later, with spokesperson Chaudhry saying the “main sponsor is eastern neighbour [India]”.
The National Assembly passed a resolution on 13 March strongly condemning the Jaffar Express hijacking and all acts of terrorism.
‘Alarming’ situation in Balochistan
The armed separatist militant group has been regularly targeting railway infrastructure; in August 2024, it blasted off a key railway bridge between Kolpur and Mach. Just a few months later, in November, a BLA-claimed suicide blast at the Quetta Railway Station killed at least 26 people and injured 62.
In its January 2025 report, Islamabad-based think tank Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) termed the situation in Balochistan “alarming”. The province experienced a sharp rise in terrorist attacks and casualties in 2024, with an 84% increase in attacks compared to the previous year, it said, adding that those carried out by the BLA and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) had shot up 119%.
The BLA is considered the biggest of the many militant groups, who, for the past few decades, have consistently claimed that Pakistan’s federal government unfairly exploits Balochistan’s rich gas and mineral resources. It is also committed to “Balochistan’s complete independence from Pakistan”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check broke down the video into still images and reverse-searched some of them.
Our search revealed that matching visuals appeared in a 21 March 2024 post (archive) by The Balochistan Post on X (formerly Twitter). The accompanying caption reads as follows:
“Video showing Pakistani personnel carrying coffins of their killed colleagues. BLA claims they killed at least 26 including 6 personnel of MI [Military Intelligence], 8 of ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence] and 12 personnel of Navy and Military [Pakistan Army]. Pakistani authorities on other hand have only confirmed 9 deaths and several injuries.”
TinEye Reverse Image Search results showed the image appeared on War Is Boring, a website that does not appear to be active anymore, redirects to another blog; it was first indexed on 3 April 2024.
A further keyword search led us to a Facebook reel (archive) posted on 20 March 2024, with the caption, “Salute to our Martyr,” and the hashtags, “#PakFouj,” “#ShaheedJawan,” and “#SalamPakFouj.”
We also came across posts asserting that the video predated March 2024 and was from a 2022 Pakistan Army helicopter crash in Lasbela, but none of them provided any link or source to substantiate their claim.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, confirms that the video in question predates the Jaffar Express hijacking and does not show the Pakistan Army sneaking away dead bodies of the soldiers who were killed in the March 2025 operation against the BLA.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim here, here, here, here, and here on X.
It also surfaced here, here, and here on Facebook.
Conclusion: The video predates the Jaffar Express hijacking and appeared online as early as March 2024.
Background image in cover photo: Garvit Nama
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