"After India won the Champions Trophy, Afghanistan celebrated with great enthusiasm," reads part of a Hindi-language X post shared on March 10, 2025.
It continues: "Only Afghanistan was with India in the entire Champions Trophy. We respect them all from the bottom of our hearts. Indians and Afghans are brothers.".
Attached to the post is a compilation of clips showing people dancing, doing stunts on bikes and auto-rickshaws, and lighting firecrackers.
"Afghanistan celebrate India victory," reads the overlaid text on the video.
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Screenshot of the false X post, captured on March 10, 2025
The video surfaced after India's four-wicket victory over New Zealand in the final of the Champions Trophy in Dubai (archived link).
The win was met with ecstatic celebrations across the country, with Indian social media flooded with videos of fans draped in the national tricolour flag pouring into the streets and setting off firecrackers, chanting slogans, and honking on busy roads and intersections.
The compilation purportedly showing similar celebrations of India's win in Afghanistan was also shared on Facebook and Instagram.
"Yes it is true, only the people of Afghanistan were with us and were celebrating our victory. Thanks to all the people of Afghanistan," read a comment on one of the posts.
Another said: "Going by the passion and love AFG fans are showering, I think the trophy should be paraded in AFG as well."
The compilation, however, appeared online before India won the Champions Trophy tournament.
'A historic win'
The video circulating online bears a watermark that reads "zekria.zeer", and a subsequent keyword search found a higher-quality version of the video was posted by an Instagram account of the same name on February 27 (archived link).
The account's bio page says it belongs to a content creator from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and the account has shared several videos from the city.
The video on the Instagram page is captioned: "A historic win for Afghanistan. Their first-ever victory in Champions Trophy history will be forever remembered in the cricket record books."
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Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the footage uploaded on Instagram in February (right)
It was shared after Afghanistan knocked out England out of the Champions Trophy tournament with a thrilling eight-run victory on February 26 (archived link).
The result sparked huge celebrations in Afghanistan, according to various media reports (archived link).
A closer analysis of one of the compilation clips shows supporters celebrating in front of a television displaying the conclusion of the Afghanistan match (archived link).
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Screenshot comparison of the Instagram video (left) and highlights from the Champions Trophy website (right), with the television shown in the Instagram clip magnified by AFP
The same compilation was also shared on a Facebook account managed by the same content creator (archived link).
In a separate Facebook post on March 11, he detailed how Indian journalists had reached out to him for comment after his video was misrepresented online (archived link).
Alongside screenshots of his conversations with journalists where he told them how he had filmed the video in Jalalabad, he wrote: "The two viral videos of the victory against England that I did in Jalalabad have become viral on Instagram and especially in India."
AFP has previously debunked similar posts that misrepresented footage as reactions to Indian cricket results here and here.