Deepfake Video Shared as Real Report About Sonam Wangchuk’s Custodial Death

The video is a deepfake. Sonam Wangchuk has not passed away.

A deepfake of an India Today reporter is being shared to falsely claim that climate activist Sonam Wangchuk died is custody.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a news report purportedly aired by India Today is being shared on social media platforms.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that Ladakhi climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, who was arrested under the National Security Act (NSA) on 26 September, passed away in custody.

• The video adds that while "officials call it medical collapse, his supporters call it custodial killing."

• It goes on to claim that Wangchuk collapsed in Jodhpur's Central Jail and was taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead within minutes.

• The claim also says that his family alleged "delayed information, possible injury marks, and refusal of immediate access to the body."

An archived version of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)

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

But...?: The video is a deepfake. There are no credible reports which confirm Wangchuk's death.

• The original India Today report talks about Karnataka's Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar.

How do we know?: We looked for news reports about Wangchuk's death, but did not find any credible reports or official announcements to corroborate the claim.

• The most recent reports about him spoke about the Supreme Court allowing him to join his wife, Gitanjali Angmo's plea challenging his detention under NSA, which will be heard on 8 December, The Hindu reported.

• Since the report carried India Today's branding, we looked for the original report on their social media pages.

• This led us to an X post shared on 26 November, which discussed Karnataka's politics and Deputy CM DK Shivakumar.

• It did not mention Wangchuk or any deaths at all.

• We also noticed that the video shared in the claim showed a different font than what India Today's reports generally use.

(Swipe.)

The false claim uses an italicised font. 

The original report uses India Today's standard font.

Is it AI?: To check whether the video had been altered using Artificial Intelligence, we submitted it to the Misinformation Combat Alliance's (MCA) Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU) for analysis.

• Hiya's Deepfake Voice Detector noted that the audio element only had a two percent match with live human voice markers, mentioning that the voice was likely to be generated or modified using AI.

The voice was created using AI.

(Source: Hiya/DAU/Screenshot)

• Swiss deep-tech company Aurigin AI's audio deepfake-detection engine also flagged the audio as AI-generated.

The audio is AI-generated.

(Source: Aurigin AI/DAU/Screenshot)

• Hive Moderation's audio classifier found the first 30 seconds of the audio track to be AI-generated, while the rest was classified as not AI-generated.

• Their deepfake detector flagged two timecodes in the video, indicating that the anchor's face shows signs of AI manipulation.

The tool marked two spots in the video as deepfakes.

(Source: Hive Moderation/DAU/Screenshot)

Conclusion: A deepfake of an India Today anchor is being shared to falsely claim that it shows a real report about climate activist Sonam Wangchuk's custodial death.

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