No, CDS Chauhan Didn’t Say India Surrendered Arunachal, Ladakh to China

The video is a deepfake. There is no evidence of CDS Chauhan having made such a statement.

A deepfake of CDS Anil Chauhan is being shared to falsely claim that he said the Indian government had ceded Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh to China.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A video of the Indian Army's Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan speaking during the passing out parade at Kerala's Indian Naval Academy in Ezhimala is being shared on social media.

What does he say?: CDS Chauhan purportedly says,

"I want to assure our naval officers that we should never lose hope. 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 & Pakistan will never be able to damage any port city of India. Even on May 10, Pakistani naval ships did not reach Gujarat, their drones did, which is a failure on the part of air defence, not us."

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)

(Another archive of a post sharing this claim can be seen here.)

Is it true?: No, it's a deepfake.

• CDS Chauhan did not make any statement about India ceding its territory to China.

How do we know?: We looked for the original video of CDS Chauhan's speech at the passing out parade.

• The Indian Navy's official YouTube channel had shared the full video of the parade on 29 November 2025.

• Around the 01:44:49 mark in the video, CDS Chauhan began addressing those in attendance.

• He spoke about the responsibility bestowed upon the cadets, the value of discipline and the importance of continuously trying despite ups and downs, the spirit of service and how "warfare has become multi-domain."

• "No single service can win a war alone. All wars in future will be fought in an integrated manner," among the three services, he said.

• CDS Chauhan made no mention of China, Arunachal Pradesh, or Ladakh.

Is it AI?: Since there was no mention of the claim made in the viral video, we ran a check through Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector.

• It gave the audio element an authenticity score of nine out of 100, stating that the voice was "likely a deepfake."

The voice is a deepfake.

(Source: Hiya/Screenshot)

PIB clarifies: The Press Information Bureau's Fact-Checking wing also issued a clarification regarding this claim, stating that the video was manipulated using Artificial Intelligence.

Conclusion: A deepfake video of CDS Anil Chauhan is being shared to falsely claim that he said that India had ceded Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh to China.

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