Has a Student Protester Injured in Police Action Died? No, Viral Image Is AI

There are no credible reports about any deaths during or after the CJP-led protest.

An image showing a garlanded photo of a young woman is being shared on social media, where users have claimed that it shows a student who died after police action against the Cockroach Janta Party-led protesters in Delhi's Jantar Mantar on 20 July.

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

But...?: The claim is false, as the image is an AI-generated one.

• There are no credible reports about any deaths during the recent protests.

How did we find out the truth?: A reverse image search on the image led us to more posts sharing the claim, but no credible sources sharing it with any relevant information.

• A keyword search for 'CJP protest death' also did not yield any relevant, credible results about deaths during, after, or being the result of the protest or police action.

• We came across an Instagram post by PTI's multimedia wing, where a Delhi Police official rubbished the claim about a woman dying, stating that "no deaths occurred during the demonstration."

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AI checks true: We ran the image through AI-generated content detectors, such as Hive Moderation and Sightengine.

• Hive Moderation showed a 100 percent certainty about the image being an AI-generated one.

• Sightengine too gave the image a 94 percent likelihood of being an AI-generated one.

• OpenAI's Verify, a tool which checks whether a piece of media was created using their tools, confirmed that the image was made using OpenAI's platforms.

Injured protester: A 21-year-old woman, identified as Sakshi, was injured during a stampede-like situation during protest and was admitted to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital on 20 July.

• On 23 July, she was taken off the ventilator and shifted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) after gaining consciousness and responding to commands, Hindustan Times reported.

• As on 26 July, she continues to be in the hospital under tight police security, with no one outside of her immediate family being allowed to meet her, Bhaskar reported.

Conclusion: An AI-generated image is being shared to falsely claim that it shows the photo of a woman who died after police action during the recent protests at Jantar Mantar.

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