Claim: An image shared on Twitter by retired Indian Major General Harsha Kakar allegedly shows that India’s tallest flag, situated at the India-Pakistan Wagah-Attari border, can be seen from a Lahore market.
Fact: The claim is false. The image in question appears to have been taken from near the Wagah border, not from a market in Lahore. In fact, the Indian flag at the Wagah-Attari border is visible in Pakistan but only within a 10 kilometre radius, approximately.
On 24 May 2022, retired Major General Harsha Kakar tweeted an image with the caption “From WhatsApp. Proud to be Indian”. The image features an Indian flag and has text on it that reads, “No, this is not India. This is Lahore, Pakistan. India’s tallest flag on Wagah border is seen from Lahore’s market.”
Fact or fiction?
The Wagah-Attari border is located 24 kilometers (15 mi) from Lahore and 32 kilometers (20 mi) from Amritsar. The Indian flag located at the border is not visible from 24 kilometres away. According to the Indian news website OpInida, the flag is visible in Pakistan but only within a ten kilometre radius on a clear day.
To further investigate the claim in question, Soch Fact Check analysed the image shared and found that it features a‘C24’ logo in the bottom left corner. The logo belongs to Pakistani news outlet City 24.
Soch Fact Check conducted a Reverse Image Search on Google. The results turned up a video from 23 March 2017, posted on the YouTube channel of City 24. The image shared by Major General Harsha Kakar is a screen capture of the video at the 0:13 second mark.
The video, titled “Wagah Attari border Indian flag disappeared,” was shot near the border and not in a Lahore market. In the video, it is reported that the 360-foot-tall Indian flag, usually visible from the Pakistani side of the border, disappeared for some time in 2017. According to the video, the flag suffered wind damage on 5 March 2017 and had to be taken down.
Soch Fact Check can therefore conclude that the claim that the Indian flag at the Wagah-Attari border is visible from a Lahore market is false.
Virality
To assess the virality of the image in question, Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis. A keyword search for the term “tallest flag on Wagah-Attari border” showed that the image in question garnered 5,000 interactions across five posts on Facebook.
The oldest relevant post was shared by a page called Shine Scope on 9 August 2019. The false claim can be found here, here, here, and here, on Facebook.
On Twitter, Major General Kakar’s tweet received 3,000 retweets and 25,6000 likes from 24 May to 31 May 2022.
Conclusion: Posts claiming that India’s tallest flag, situated at the Wagah-Attari border, can be seen from a Lahore market are false. While the flag is visible within Pakistan, this is only within an approximate radius of 10 kilometre. The Wagah-Attari border is located 24 kilometres from Lahore. The image which allegedly shows that the flag is visible from Lahore was in fact taken from a video shot near the border.