Digitally Altered Clip of Surinder Choudhary Calling PM Modi ‘ISI Agent’ Viral

We did not find this statement in the original byte given to the press by Choudhary.

Fact-Check: This video is digitally altered and not real, as claimed.

(Source: The Quint) 

A video featuring Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Surinder Choudhary has gone viral on social media, alleging that he referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

What did he say?: Speaking about J&K, Choudhary spoke about Pakistan wanting to split the erstwhile state.

"They have been doing this for the past 70 years, from terrorists back then to now, they have always done this after dividing Jammu and Kashmir. Prime Minister Modi is actually an agent of Pakistani ISI. Pakistan has appointed him as the Prime Minister of India. Pakistan was behind defeating Congress in the elections.Modi is creating a situation in Kashmir that in the next three years, Kashmir will go to Pakistan. We have tried a lot to keep Kashmir with India, but now the matter is not under our control. The people who were with India earlier, now they are also with Pakistan. And it is all the Prime Minister's fault."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Instagram/Screenshot) 

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false as this video is digitally altered.

• Deputy CM Choudhary did not label PM Modi as an 'ISI agent,' in the original video.

What we found: At first, we ran a relevant keyword search to check whether Choudhary had made any such statement however, did not find any credible sources to prove the validity of the claim.

• We, then, divided the viral clip into multiple screenshots and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• It led us to a YouTube video uploaded by 'JK Update,' featuring similar frames. We went through the entire and found no mention of Choudhary labelling PM Modi an 'ISI agent.'

In this video, a reporter asked the Dy CM Choudhary about those talking about a 'separate union.' To this, he responded noting:

"Whoever tries to break JK in any form, whether he talks about making a separate state, whether he talks about breaking J&K at a divisional level, these are the people who are demanding, who are talking about the two-nation theory.These are the people who are talking about the Dixon theory. These are the people who are talking about what Pakistan and the ISI have always talked about breaking J&K from the Kawalis for 70 years. These are the people who are again climbing on that policy of Pakistan to weaken JK."

There is no mention of PM Modi or the Congress party in the entire video.

• Additionally, he spoke about the Bharatiya Janata Party–People's Democratic Party alliance, its division and downgrade to a Union Territory, and that only restoring full statehood can address unemployment, funding gaps, and protect land and jobs for locals.

• Team WebQoof also slowed down the video and noticed that the lip movement did not match when the part about PM Modi came up in the viral clip.

• This led us to run the video on artificial intelligence detection tool, Deepfake-O-Meter, where only two of its parameter revealed that the video was created with AI.

Here are the results by Deepfake-O-Meter.

Here are the results by Deepfake-O-Meter.

Conclusion: The viral clip is digitally altered as Choudhary has made no such statement against PM Modi.

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