A video from a press briefing by police officials in Leh is being shared on social media, claiming to show their statements in connection to Ladakhi activist and innovator Sonam Wangchuk's arrest after violence broke out in the region.
What do they say?: In the video, one of the officials provides details about the number of deaths and people injured during the violence in Ladakh.
He goes on to say that they received direct orders from Union Home Minister Amit Shah's office to arrest Sonam Wangchuk and accuse him of being a "Pakistani agent."
The official appeals to the people of Leh to not attack police as they were only following orders, but to go to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) offices to air their grievances, as they are "just servants" and have "no role in the arrest."
At the time of writing this report, this X post shared by the Maharashtra wing of the Indian National Congress was viewed approximately 15,000 times.
(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here and here.)
Is it true?: No, the claim is false as the video has been manipulated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
How do we know?: We looked for the press conference's video on the official social media accounts of Leh's administration, and found it on the official Facebook page of the Department of Information & Public Relations, Leh, Ladakh.
It mentioned that it showed a press briefing by Leh's Additional Deputy Commissioner, Ghulam Mohammed, and Additional Superintendent of Police, Regzin Sangdup.
In the video, ADC Ghulam Mohammed gave updates related to deaths, injuries, and people discharged after the violence in Ladakh, mentioning that some patients had to be sent to Delhi for treatment.
He then appealed to people to maintain peace and order.
There was no mention of Sonam Wangchuk, Amit Shah, or the BJP, as heard in the claim.
In the viral claim, the audio quality and the tone of the ADC's voice suddenly changes when he mentions Shah, indicating that the audio may have been tampered with.
We ran it through University at Buffalo's Media Forensics Lab's tool Deepfake-o-Meter, which showed a strong likelihood of the audio being AI-generated.
The tool showed stronger results for the video portion as well, showing that it was also AI-generated.
For thorough checks, we shared the video with the Misinformation Combat Alliance's (MCA) Deepfakes Analysis Unit (DAU), who ran it through several AI-generated content detection tools.
While Hive Moderation's tool did not find the video to contain any AI-generated content, Hiya's audio detection tool said that the "voice seems generated or modified by AI."
Swiss deep-tech company Aurigin.ai's tool found 82 percent of the audio track to be synthetic.
PIB clarifies: The Press Information Bureau's (PIB) fact-check wing also shared a post about the claim on their X account, calling the video one which was "artificially altered using AI-technology."
Conclusion: An AI-manipulated video of Leh's ADC is being shared to falsely claim that Union Home Minister Amit Shah order Sonam Wangchuk's arrest.
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