Fact Check: India surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China, says CDS Gen Anil Chauhan? No, video is AI-manipulated
A video is going viral on social media with the claim that CDS Gen Chauhan said the Indian government surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China.
By - K Sherly Sharon
Claim:The video shows Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan saying the Indian government surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China.
Fact:The claim is false. The video has been manipulated by merging AI-generated audio.
Hyderabad: A video showing Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan addressing a crowd at a public meeting is going viral on social media.
In the video, Gen Anil Chauhan could be allegedly heard saying, “I want to assure our Naval officers that we should never lose hope. Although I am aware that the Indian Government has surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China due to our weak Air Force but be assured that the Indian Navy is not weak and Pakistan will never be able to damage any port city of India. Even on May 10, Pakistani Naval ships could not reach Gujarat, their drones did, which is a failure on the part of air defence, not us.”
Sharing the video on X (post withheld but accessible through a VPN), a user wrote, “Breaking News….Kerala: Reviewing Officer of the Passing Out Parade at Indian Naval Academy, Ezhimala, Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan says, ‘Although I am aware that Indian Government has surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China due to our weak Airforce but be assured that Indian Navy is not weak and Pakistan will never be able to damage any port city of India.’” (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Source of the video
We observed that the video has an ANI logo on the top left.
Using reverse image search of the keyframes, we found a report published by ANI on November 29. The title reads, ‘Navy will play a decisive role in securing India's destiny, says CDS General Anil Chauhan’. The cover image of CDS Gen Anil Chauhan from the meeting is the same as the viral visuals. The image caption states that Gen Chauhan was addressing the PoP of INA Ezhimala.
According to the report, Gen Chauhan addressed the newly inducted Naval officers passing out from the Indian Naval Academy (INA), Ezhimala, on November 29.
He highlighted the Navy’s being positioned to play a decisive role in securing India’s destiny and in any future application of military power for securing national interests.
Similarly, Republic World livestreamed the INA Passing Out Parade on YouTube on November 29. In this video, Gen Chauhan can be heard speaking from the 1:04:58-minute mark to 1:16:12-minute mark. In his entire speech, he doesn’t make any remarks about Arunachal Pradesh or China as claimed in the viral video.
ANI also shared visuals from the event from their X account on November 29. The 2:44-minute-long video shows Gen Chauhan addressing the gathering. The viral video contains several different clips of Gen Chauhan talking and the crowd listening to him. The same video clips can be seen in the ANI video too. However, these clips are not in the same sequence as the viral video.
This indicates that the viral video is a manipulated version of the video shared by ANI on X.
Analysis of the video
We analysed the audio track of the viral video using Hiya Audio Intelligence, an AI content detection tool. The tool determined that the viral audio track was generated or modified by AI. There is only an 8 per cent match with live human markers.
It is clear that the viral video is manipulated using AI. Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false.
