Deepfake Shared as Real Video of Army Official Talking About ‘Akhand Bharat'

The video is a deepfake. There is no evidence of Major General Mann making such a statement.

A deepfake of ADB's Major General CS Mann is being shared to falsely claim that he spoke about 'controlling Pakistan' from three sides and forming an 'Akhand Bharat' at the Synergia Conclave in Delhi.

(Source: Instagram/Altered by The Quint)

A video of Major General CS Mann, Additional Director General of the Army Design Bureau (ADB) speaking at an event is being shared on social media.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that while speaking at the Synergia Conclave in Delhi, Major General CS Mann, said, " "If Israel succeeds in taking down Iran, then Pakistan can be controlled from 3 sides. India from the East & Afghan Taliban and Pro Israel Iran from left. This is the Indian route to take back Akhand Bharat. The threat of Bangladesh and Nepal shall be dealt later (sic)."

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot)

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

But...?: There is no evidence of Major General Mann having made any statement of this nature, making the claim false.

• Additionally, AI-detection tools marked this video as a deepfake.

How do we know?: We ran a keyword search to look for Major General Mann's talk at the Synergia Conclave in Delhi, which was held between 11 and 13 March.

• This led us to an X post by news agency ANI, which showed him speaking about intelligence systems, AI, and AI's limitations, in a different setting than seen in the viral claim.

• Since the room was different, we ran a reverse image search on the video to look for similar visuals, supplementing our search with 'PTI' as a keyword as one can see their logo in the viral claim.

• This search showed us an X post shared on 4 July 2025, which showed the ADB officer in the same setting as the one in the claim.

• In this video, he spoke about the military not using any Chinese-made parts to make any military components, and that they were "keeping stringent checks and protocols to eliminate vulnerabilities, especially in drone systems."

We found several reports (links here and here) about his statement about Chinese parts, none of which mentioned the Iran-Israel war or 'Akhand Bharat', as claimed.

Is it AI?: As there was no truth to the claim made, we ran this video through AI detectors.

• Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector gave the video an authenticity score of 21 out of 100, noting that the audio element was "likely a deepfake."

Hiya's tool noted that the audio was a deepfake.

(Source: Hiya/Screenshot)

• We also ran the video through Buffalo University's Deepfake-o-meter, which has ten detectors to analyse content.

• Four of its detectors showed a 97.8 percent or higher certainty in the video being an AI-generated one.

Two detectors showed that the video is a deepfake.

(Source: Deepfake-o-meter/Screenshot)

Two more detectors here showed that the video is a deepfake.

(Source: Deepfake-o-meter/Screenshot)

PIB clarifies: The Press Information Bureau (PIB) shared a post on its X account to call out the claim.

• Sharing the claim and original video, they called the former an "#AI-generated deepfake video."

Conclusion: A deepfake of Major General CS Mann is being shared to falsely claim that he spoke about surrounding Pakistan and forming 'Akhand Bharat' during the Synergia Conclave in Delhi.

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