Claim: A video shows civilians passengers released by the BLA a few hours after the separatist militant group hijacked the Jaffar Express in March 2025.
Fact: The clip predates the Jaffar Express hijacking.
On 12 March 2025, X user @safarkhanb posted (archive) a video showing a group of people in a mountainous area with the claim that they were some of the passengers from the Peshawar-bound Jaffar Express train that was hijacked by the separatist militant group Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) just hours before.
The accompanying caption is as follows:
“یہ وہ منظر ہے جب بی ایل اے کے سرمچاروں نے جعفر ایکسپریس پر کنٹرول سنبھالا خواتین و بچوں سمیت تمام سویلین مسافروں محفوظ راستہ فراہم کردیا اور مسافر اپنی مدد آپ کے تحت قریبی علاقے کو پہنچے اور اب پاکستان فوج رات کو بھڑکایا مار رہا ہے کہ ہم نے انہیں بازیاب کیا ہے۔
[This is the scene when the BLA guerilla fighters took control of the Jaffar Express, provided safe passage to all civilian passengers, including women and children, and the passengers reached the nearby area on their own. Now the Pakistan Army is deceitfully boasting that we have rescued them.]”
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?
Using keyframes from the viral clip in reverse-image search tools, Soch Fact Check came across this YouTube video (archive), which was posted on 9 March 2025 and contains the TikTok username @hamida.ansari.
We found the same video on the TikTok account of user @hamida.ansari, who posted (archive) it on 7 March 2025. This indicates that the clip predates the Jaffar Express hijacking, which took place on 11 March 2025.
A comparison comprising a screenshot from the viral video (L) and another from the original one posted on 7 March 2025 (R)
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the video has nothing to do with the hijacking of the Jaffar Express.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the video posted here on X (formerly Twitter), as well as here, here, here, and here on YouTube.
Conclusion: The clip predates the Jaffar Express hijacking.
Background image in cover photo: Ibrahim Mansoor
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