A video of the Indian Army's Colonel Sofia Qureshi talking on a stage is being shared on social media, claiming to show her 'going off' on live TV.
The claim: In the video, Colonel Qureshi purportedly says, "Today, I stand here, not as a political pawn, but as a soldier of the Indian Army. For two-and-a-half years, I have served my country with pride, until I realised we were being used as props to divide our own citizens."
"The saffronisation of our ranks is a betrayal of every oath we took. Our job is to defend India, not the ideology of BJP or RSS. These so-called Trishul exercises before the Bihar elections are nothing but theatre to fool the nation. Uniforms are being painted in ideology, not honour. This must stop now. If speaking the truth costs my uniform, so be it. I still stand with India, not with hate," she allegedly says.
How do we know?: A reverse image search led us to a video with the same visuals, shared on news agency ANI's YouTube channel.
Its title mentioned that it showed Colonel Qureshi speaking at the Indian Army’s Chanakya Defence Dialogue, in New Delhi on 31 October 2025.
In the video, she said that the dialogue was a "flagship event hosted by the Indian Army to connect and align youth with Viksit Bharat 2047," going on to say that India is being protected by both, knowledge and weapons.
Naming historic figures and freedom fighters, Colonel Qureshi remarked how "every generation has carried the flame of patriotism, from baby boomers to Gen Z," mentioning how fights were happening on ground as well as online.
Throughout her speech, she made no mention of ideologies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bihar elections, or saffronisation of the Indian Army.
Is it AI?: To check whether the video had been manipulated using AI, we ran it through a variety of AI-generated content detection tools.
Hiya's Deepfake Voice detector gave the audio an authenticity rating of one out of 100, saying that the voice was "likely a deepfake."
Hive Moderation's tool showed 99.9 percent certainty that the claim contained AI-generated or deepfake content.
However, it only showed these results for the audio track and not the video element.
We also passed the video through several of DeepFake-O-Meter's detectors, three of which conclusively noted, with over 99 percent confidence, that the video is a deepfake.
(Swipe to view results.)
Deepfake-O-Meter showed high confidence in the video being a deepfake.
(Source: Deepfake-O-Meter/Altered by The Quint)
PIB's clarification: Calling out the viral claim, the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on its official fact-check account called the video a "fake" and an "AI-generated one."
Conclusion: A deepfake of Colonel Sofia Qureshi is being shared to falsely claim that she spoke against the 'saffronisation of the Army' and called Trishul exercises a 'political gimmick'.
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