Claim: A grieving father is seen crying in a video after losing his only son in the March 2022 bomb blast that targeted a Shia mosque in Peshawar.
Fact: The video is, in fact, from January 2021 and depicts a man crying after losing his son Ather Mushtaq in Indian administered Kashmir. The video is now being reshared with a false claim.
Fact or Fiction
On 8 March 2022, Soch Fact Check received a link to a Facebook video with the following Urdu caption:
ایک والد کی دلخراش چیخ “میرا ایک ہی بیٹا تھا” سانحہ پشاور.
Translated into English, the caption reads, “A father’s heartbreaking cry ’I had only one son’ Peshawar tragedy.” The video allegedly showed a grieving father crying after losing his son in the Peshawar bomb blast which took place earlier this month.
However, the claim made in the caption is false as the video is not from Peshawar but from Kashmir. The video in fact shows a man grieving after his son Ather Mushtaq was killed in Indian administrated Kashmir. The video was shared by a Kashmiri photojournalist Basir Zargar on 4 January 2021 on his verified Twitter account with the caption:
“Parents of Ather Mushtaq who was killed in an alleged fake encounter demand body to be handed over to them.”
In a longer version of the video, Mushtaq’s family can be seen demanding that their son’s body be returned to them.
Virality
The video was shared multiple times on Facebook between 4 March and 10 March 2022, usually with misleading captions referring to the recent suicide blast targeting a Shia mosque in Peshawar.
The video was shared here, here, here, here and here on Facebook and here, here, here, here and here on Twitter with the hashtags #Peshawar and #ShiaGeocide.
On 5 March 2022, well-known Pakistani journalist Asma Shirazi also retweeted the video with the quote tweet “insecurity in a security state”.
Conclusion: A video circulating in connection to the Peshawar blast is misleading as it is in fact from January 2021 and depicts a father grieving after losing his son in Indian administered Kashmir.