Video of Rajnath Singh Talking About 'Low Morale' in Indian Army Is a Deepfake

The original video shows him extending Diwali greetings to Indian Army personnel in Sikkim.

A deepfake is going viral on social media with false claims that it shows the Defence Minister of India, Rajnath Singh, saying that morale is low among the Indian Army during Diwali celebrations.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

A video is going viral on social media, claiming to show Defence Minister of India Rajnath Singh saying that the morale is low among the Indian Army personnel during his address ahead of the Diwali celebrations.

What does he say in the video?: In the video, Rajnath Singh says to the Army personnel,

I know that your morale is very low. Along with you, our morale is also very low. But in life, there are ups and downs. If we had good times in the past and are going through bad times now, it does not mean that these bad times will last forever. A time will surely come when our good days return, and we will once again become Vishwaguru.

An archived version of this claim can be found here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

Is it true?: No, the claim is false, as the video is a deepfake.

• In the original video, he makes no mention of 'low morale' among the Indian Army.

How did we find out?: We conducted a keyword search and couldn't find any credible sources reporting on it.

• Next, we ran a reverse image search on the video, which led us to a report by ANI with the same visuals.

• The report shows Singh addressing the Indian Army at Sherathang War Memorial in Sikkim.

• The video shows him extending Diwali greetings to army personnel and their family, and acknowledging the sacrifice made by the soldiers to protect the country.

• We also found a longer version of the video uploaded by Singh's official YouTube account.

• There was no mention of 'low morale' among the Indian Army.

Is it AI?: We ran the video through Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector, a tool that detects AI-generated audio, and it flagged the audio as AI.

Here is the result of AI detection by Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector.

(Source: Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector/ Screenshot)

• We also ran the video through an AI detector, Hive Moderation, which flagged it as 99.4 percent likely to have AI-generated speech.

Here's the result of AI detection by  Hive Moderation.

(Source: Hive Moderation/ Screenshot)

Indian Army's Clarification: The Indian Army's fact-checking unit also clarified that the video is "digitally manipulated and falsely portrays him as acknowledging low morale among Indian Army personnel during Diwali celebrations."

Conclusion: The video of Rajnath Singh stating there is low morale among Indian Army personnel is a deepfake.

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