A video claiming that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh criticised the Indian Army over the conflict with China is false, according to a fact-check by The Quint. The clip, which has been shared widely on social media, was manipulated using artificial intelligence and does not show a real statement by Singh.
Key points
- A viral video claims Rajnath Singh spoke against the Indian Army over the India-China conflict.
- The Quint found no credible report of Singh making such a statement.
- The visuals come from a different, real event in which Singh spoke about remarks on the Prime Minister's late father.
- Two AI-detection tools indicated that the video was likely AI-generated.
What the viral video claims
In the clip, Singh is shown speaking to the press. He appears to say that the intermittent conflict between India and China "is not that big an issue in our view." He also appears to say that the government was giving "full cooperation to the military" and had set aside more funds than before.
The video then shows him saying that Army soldiers were "extremely troubled" and were rebelling against the government. It also has him asking why the Army was "having such a hard time" when the Air Force and the Navy had no issue. The clip further accuses the Army of trying to defame the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government.
The post was shared by an X user named 'anushitiwari22', an account that had earlier been called out for sharing misinformation. At the time of The Quint's report it had nearly 1.24 lakh views, and other users shared the same claim.
How the claim was checked
The Quint first searched for reports using keywords such as "Rajnath Singh Indian Army China". It found no credible report showing Singh making the remarks.
A reverse image search with Google Lens then led to an X post by the news agency IANS. The microphone seen in the viral clip matched the one in that post. The IANS video was shared on 26 October. In it, Singh spoke about Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge's alleged remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's late father.
In that real video, Singh called the remarks "personal insults" and "crude language". He said they showed the Congress party's ideological decline. He added that opposing ideas, disagreeing and protesting were welcome, but personal attacks were not. He also posted the same statement on his verified X account.
When the two videos were compared, Singh's voice was found to be different in the two audio tracks.
What the AI detection tools showed
With no evidence that Singh ever made the China-related remarks, The Quint ran the clip through two AI-content detectors. Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector checked the audio and indicated that it was likely AI-generated or a deepfake. The Quint said Hive Moderation's tool also indicated that the video likely contained AI-generated content.
The fact-check concludes that the video is manipulated and that Singh did not criticise the Army in this way.
Why it matters
For readers who follow defence matters, the case shows how a real press event can be reused with a fake voice to create a false story about the armed forces and their relationship with the government. Checking a claim against credible news reports, and against official posts from the person concerned, can help avoid sharing such content.
