No, Rajnath Singh Didn’t Say India Was Funding Taliban Against Pakistan

The video has been altered using AI. Singh has not said that India is funding the Taliban to fight Pakistan.

An AI-manipulated video of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is being shared to falsely claim he admitted that India was funding Taliban to fight Pakistan.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to an audience is being shared on social media.

• In the video, Singh purportedly talks about the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government "buying Afghanistan's rental army using dollars," praising his strategy to use Taliban's soldiers to fight Pakistan.

• He adds that India should support Afghan and Talibani soldiers, as they would end Pakistan and help establish an "undivided India," or 'Akhand Bharat'.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that during the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's (RSS) event to mark its centenary, Singh 'admitted' that India was "funding the #Taliban to fight Pakistan for dollars."

An archived version of this post can be seen here.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 and here.)

But…?: The clip has been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

• In the original video, Singh talks about BrahMos missiles manufactured in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, and India's handling of Operation Sindoor.

How do we know?: We ran a simple reverse image search using Google Lens, which took us to a video of Singh's speech on ABP News' verified YouTube channel, where it was shared on 18 October.

• He spoke in detail about the lot of BrahMos missiles manufactured in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, calling the city an important site for defence manufacturing.

• Calling BrahMos the 'backbone' of India's armed forces, he said that its reliability strengthened Operation Sindoor, calling it the "practical proof" of it being effective in defending the country.

• Speaking at the BrahMos Aerospace Unit in Lucknow, he said that "every inch Pakistan's land" was in its range, and that Operation Sindoor "was a trailer" of what India could do.

• More videos of the defence minister's full speech can be heard here and here.

However, throughout the video, Singh did not make the statement which was shared in the viral claim.

• Additionally, in this video, Singh's voice was more natural, compared to the monotonous voice heard in the claim.

• Taking a cue from these markers, we ran it through Hive Moderation's AI-generated content detector.

• It's tool noted a 97 percent likelihood of the audio element being AI-generated.

Overall, the tool said the video was 97.4 percent likely to be AI-generated.

(Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)

Conclusion: An AI-manipulated video is being shared to claim that Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that India was funding the Taliban to fight against Pakistan.

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