Saudi army chief is currently on a visit to India and has met Indian army chief

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team has reviewed this content and determined that it is misleading.

To reach this conclusion, the iVerify Pakistan team conducted a keyword search to trace and source the photograph of the meeting between the Saudi and Indian army chiefs.

Multiple posts circulating on social media platform X on July 2, 2024, shared a photo and claimed that it showed the Saudi army chief on a current visit to India and meeting the Indian army chief. However, the image is actually from February 2022.

HOW IT STARTED

On July 2, 2024, a post was shared by an X user, who appeared to be a PTI supporter according to his past posts, with the caption, “Let’s say that India is an enemy, but we consider Saudi Arabia as our friend or as a brother country. Now the state of foreign policy is that the army chief of Saudi Arabia is on a visit to India and met with the Indian army chief. This official picture is released. You can see the picture in the background. They have brought us to the depths of humiliation.”

The picture showed Saudi Arabia Land Forces Commander Lieutenant General Fahd Bin Abdullah Mohammed Al-Mutair and Indian Army Chief Manoj Mukund Naravane while in the background was a portrait of Lieutenant General AAK Niazi, Commander of the Pakistan Army in the East, signing the Instrument of Surrender in the presence of Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora on December 16, 1971, in Dhaka.

The post was seen by over 25,000 views and continued to gain more.

The same post with a similar caption was shared by other X users as well here and here.

METHODOLOGY

A fact check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and keen public interest in the matter since it pertained to Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan’s foreign policy.

To investigate the claim, a keyword search was conducted to check if any news outlet covered the news of the Saudi army chief’s visit to India. Keyword searches for “Saudi army chief”, “visit” and “India” yielded various stories and reports from February 2022 and not the current period.

The first news story was published by Dawn.com on February 17, 2022, with the headline, “Saudi army chief makes ‘historic and landmark’ first visit to India”.

According to the report, Saudi Army Chief Lieutenant General Fahd Bin Abdullah Mohammed Al-Mutair made a historic first visit to India, marking the deepening of bilateral defence cooperation between the two countries.

It added that during his three-day trip, he met with Indian Army Chief Manoj Mukund Naravane, discussed enhancing defence ties and visited the Indian National Defence University.

Another news report was published by Arab News, a Saudi English daily newspaper, on February 16, 2022, with the headline, “Saudi defence chief’s India visit part of ‘steady evolution’ of relations — experts”.

The viral image and its setting are actually from Feb 15, 2022, when the two held a meeting at New Delhi’s South Block, the headquarters of the Indian Ministry of Defence.

The visit took place during the time of the PTI government and curiously, had invited the same criticism from the then-opposition as the claims currently circulating in that the visit and meeting represented a failure of the incumbent government’s foreign policy.

PML-N leader Ahsan Iqbal had said in an X post on Feb 20, 2022, while sharing the same viral image, that “this news item published in Saudi Gazette in the shadows of East Pakistan surrender picture says volumes about our foreign policy under Imran Khan’s visionary leadership. What a fall in every field in just three and a half years.”

FACT-CHECK STATUS: MISLEADING

The claim regarding the image of the Saudi army chief’s visit to India and meeting with the Indian army chief is misleading.

The image is from a visit and meeting back in February 2022 — not from any current visit or trip as per the impression given by the July 2 posts which use the present tense of “is on a trip to India” instead of the past tense of “was on a trip to India” or “had visited India”.

Such distortion and hiding of the image and visit’s actual context and date can mislead the public about the actual timing of the development and lead them to think it is a current incident.

Evidence and References

February 17, 2022, Dawn.com news story:
https://www.dawn.com/news/1675572/saudi-army-chief-makes-historic-and-landmark-first-visit-to-india

February 16,2022, Arab News report:
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2025976/world

Ahsan Iqbal’s February 20, 2022, X post:
https://x.com/betterpakistan/status/1495376019951611905