#FactCheck - AI-Generated Image Falsely Linked to Doda Army Vehicle Accident

Introduction

National AVGC-XR stands for National Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics, and Extended Reality. On 21 Aug 2024 Shri Sanjay Jaju, Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Speaking at the 5th Global AVGC and Immersive Media Summit 2024,  announced that the National AVGC-XR Policy will be implemented soon. National AVGC-XR policy aims to facilitate investment, foster innovation, ensure skill development, protect intellectual property and help build world-class infrastructure. Additionally, Atul Kumar Tiwari, Secretary of Ministry of Skills and Entrepreneurship, said that the Centre's decision to revamp 1,000 ITIs is pivotal in aligning workforce skills with AVGC industry needs. He called for enhanced intellectual property rights to retain talent and content in India.

Key Highlights of National AVGC-XR Policy 

• The policy will be implemented in conjunction with the National AVGC-XR Mission to improve India's AVGC sectors through infrastructure development, skill enhancement, innovation, and regulatory support.
• The policy aims to improve India's international competitiveness in the AVGC industry, specifically by supporting the creation of unique intellectual properties (IPs) that can gain worldwide acclaim.
• The policy acknowledges the significance of adapting and converting content for various international viewers, which has become easier considering technological advancements.
• The government is dedicated to providing strong policies and financial backing to the AVGC industry, ensuring that India continues to be a worldwide leader in the sector.

Tech-driven trends in the AVGC-XR Sector promoting exponential growth

• Advancements in technology specifically when we talk about the Animation and VFX industry, emerging trends such as AR, VR, and real-time 3D technology, are driving the expansion of the metaverse, resulting in a rising need for fresh jobs and broadening uses beyond gaming into education, e-commerce, and entertainment. Moreover, the transition to cloud-oriented production processes and the increase in unique or original content on OTT platforms are improving cooperation and propelling industry growth. To drive expansion, global OTT leaders are commissioning more original content. This has increased the need for VFX, post-production, and animation services.
• Technological advancements in India's gaming industry, like cloud gaming, increased popularity of mobile gaming, the introduction of 5G and 6G, and recognition of e-gaming at national and international forums, are breaking down obstacles and fueling swift growth, positioning India as a key player in growing e-gaming sector worldwide. Furthermore, the integration of gamification and XR in education and training is generating immersive experiences that improve learning and skill building, contributing to the expansion of the AVGC-XR industry.
• The comics industry is being transformed by technological advancements like digital technology and self-publishing, which are increasing access and distribution through online platforms and social media. The rising popularity of graphic novels and the greater use of digital comics, particularly among young audiences with smartphones, are fueling substantial growth in the AVGC-XR industry.
• The use of AR, VR, and MR (Mixed Reality) technologies is rapidly growing due to tech-driven trends in Extended Reality (XR), transforming industries such as healthcare, education, and retail. The rising number of startups in this sector, boosted by higher venture capital funding, is speeding up the uptake of XR services, establishing it as a primary catalyst of innovation and expansion in various industries.

Final Words:

Just like the IT revolution, the Indian AVGC-XR industry along with technological trends and advancements has great potential. With the growth in various sectors within the AVGC industry, the right policy framework in place and government support, it will be forefront of India’s global standing in the AVGC sectoral growth including various Intellectual Property (IP), creations, and outsourcing services. The proposed AVGC-XR policy with a forward-thinking approach will drive the industry growth. Thus, a comprehensive integrated and collaborative approach is essential. Furthermore with rising trends in technological space including the use of AR, VR, cloud spaces, 6G and expansion of the OTT sector, the safe and secure use in terms of cybersecurity is encouraged to ultimately protect the interest of users and establish a safe secure cyber world driven by exponential growth in various sectors including AVGC. We’re at the cusp of a new era, where we’re looking at technological advancements not as a tool but as a way of life, hence safe and secure usage remains a top priority.

References: 

1. https://www.cii.in/PressreleasesDetail.aspx?enc=IkIXRoaDhS+jXtgjqb7UcbWSnaI7mgIS485nHsQEMbw
2. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/avgc-xr-policy-to-be-implemented-in-tandem-with-national-avgc-xr-mission-ib-secretary/article68550433.ece#:~:text=Speaking%20at%20the%20Fifth%20Global,competitiveness%20by%20fostering%20infrastructure%20development%2C
3. https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/Annexure%20C-AVGC-XR%20-%20Draft%20for%20National%20Policy_16th%20December%202022-AG%20EDIT.pdf
4. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/potential-of-india-s-avgc-xr-sector

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Introduction

Meta smart glasses are now banned from courts across England and Wales. His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), the body responsible for criminal, civil, and family courts throughout the jurisdiction, has confirmed that anyone entering a court building wearing the devices will have them confiscated at the door and returned only when they leave. The decision follows a comparable restriction introduced by New York's court system weeks earlier, and it lands at a moment when Meta's artificial intelligence (AI) powered eyewear, now sold in more than seven million pairs worldwide, has already been turned away from a wide range of British venues, from pubs and restaurants to theatres and members' clubs, over the same underlying worry: that a camera built into an ordinary looking pair of glasses can record people who have no way of knowing it is happening. Courts occupy a category of their own in this debate. Photography and recording inside a courtroom have been prohibited for the better part of a century, precisely because the integrity of witness testimony, jury deliberation, and the dignity of the proceedings depend on people being able to speak and be observed only by those the law intends. Smart glasses do not just test that rule. They expose a gap in how it was ever meant to be enforced.

What actually changed, and why smartphones were never the real problem

Unauthorised filming inside a courtroom can be prosecuted as contempt of court. Smartphones, despite carrying multiple cameras, have always been let through security on a kind of implicit social contract: everyone understands that the device could record, everyone understands that using it to do so is a punishable offence, and the visible act of holding a phone up to film someone is itself a signal that can be seen and stopped. As per reports citing an HMCTS spokesperson, "There are clear restrictions on taking images or videos within courts and tribunals which is why the use of Meta glasses is prohibited."

Smart glasses dissolve that social contract. A person wearing them looks, to everyone around them, exactly like a person not recording anything at all. 

The wider pattern this fits into

England and Wales did not act in isolation. New York's court system introduced a comparable restriction weeks earlier, following an incident during a trial in which a presiding judge warned Meta's own legal team, present in court wearing the company's glasses, that recording proceedings would be treated as contempt. Reports note that the same device has already been shut out of a striking range of everyday venues across Britain, including a major pub chain, high end restaurants, private members' clubs, theatres, music venues, and comic book conventions, with critics giving the product the unflattering nickname "pervert glasses" well before any court got involved.

That pattern matters analytically because it shows this is not really a story about courts distrusting one particular gadget. It is a story about physical spaces everywhere recalibrating what "no recording" can plausibly mean once recording no longer requires a visible object pointed at someone. Meta, for its part, has said the glasses carry a pulsing light-emitting diode (LED) indicator that activates during recording and tamper detection technology intended to stop wearers covering the light, and the company has shipped more than seven million pairs, commanding, according to reports, more than 80 percent of the global AI eyewear market. None of that changes how the device is experienced by the person being recorded, who typically has no reliable way of noticing a small light on the side of someone's face across a room.

There is a genuine innovation story sitting underneath this controversy, and it deserves to be told honestly rather than dismissed. Wearable AI devices that layer translation, navigation, accessibility support, and hands free computing onto ordinary looking eyewear represent one of the more interesting consumer hardware categories to emerge in years, and the underlying engineering, fitting a camera, microphones, speakers, and AI processing into frames that look like Ray-Bans, is a legitimate technical achievement. The court ban is not a verdict on that achievement. It is a verdict on a specific gap between what the hardware makes physically possible and what existing social and legal norms were designed to detect and police. Those are two different conversations, and collapsing them into one tends to produce worse policy on both sides.

Reading the legal architecture underneath the ban

What HMCTS has effectively done is draw a bright line around function rather than form. Smartphones stay in because the courts are relying on deterrence, the near certainty of visible detection and prosecution if someone is caught filming, to manage the risk they pose. Smart glasses are excluded because that deterrence model breaks down when the recording apparatus is invisible by design. Clara Westbrook, a privacy law partner quoted in coverage of the decision, framed the underlying issue as a gap between the technology and the rules meant to govern it, rather than a simple case of institutional overreaction. That framing holds up under scrutiny. Courtroom rules were written for an era in which recording devices announced themselves. Smart glasses were engineered, whatever the stated intent, to do the opposite.

The view from India

Photography and videography are already prohibited inside Indian court premises as a general rule. Filming inside courtrooms has long been treated as a threat to witness candour, judicial dignity, and the orderly conduct of proceedings, and the principle has been reinforced recently. The Supreme Court, in a circular issued in September 2025, imposed a strict ban on photography, videography, and the creation of social media content within its High Security Zone, prohibiting mobile phones, cameras, tripods, and similar equipment except for official use. More recently, in an interim order passed in 2026, the Court went further, restricting the extraction, editing, and re-dissemination of audio-video recordings of judicial proceedings on social media or digital platforms without prior written permission from the Registrar General of the concerned High Court or the Secretary General of the Supreme Court.

Read together, these rules already prohibit the underlying act that smart glasses would enable inside a courtroom, unauthorized capture and circulation of what happens during a hearing. In that sense, Meta glasses are indirectly covered the moment someone wears a pair inside an Indian court, since using them to record would fall squarely within conduct the existing circulars already forbid. What has not happened, and this distinction matters, is any explicit order naming smart glasses as a class of device to be confiscated or barred at entry, the way HMCTS has now done in England and Wales. Indian courts have regulated the act of recording. They have not yet regulated the device that makes covert recording structurally easier to commit without detection. 

It remains to be seen whether Indian courts will explicitly name and ban Meta glasses, rather than relying on existing photography rules to cover them indirectly. If that happens, the reasoning will be drawn on constitutional privacy jurisprudence or courtroom security concerns already in play.

Conclusion

What courts owe the people who appear before them is not hostility toward innovation, but a firm defence of the trust a courtroom is built on, that witnesses can speak freely, that proceedings remain what they are meant to be, and that privacy inside those walls is not negotiable. The question worth asking is not what smart glasses can see, but what courts must protect. Innovation earns its place by respecting the spaces it enters, not by outrunning their rules.

References

1. The Guardian, "Meta glasses banned from courts in England and Wales," 11 August 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/11/meta-glasses-banned-from-courts-in-england-and-wales
2. Engadget, "England and Wales ban Meta Glasses from courtrooms.”  https://www.engadget.com/2234606/england-and-wales-ban-meta-glasses-from-courtrooms/
3. TechRepublic, "England and Wales Courts Ban Meta Smart Glasses Over Recording Risks." https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-meta-smart-glasses-ban-england-wales-courts/
4. BM Magazine, "Meta glasses banned from courts across England and Wales." https://bmmagazine.co.uk/legal/meta-glasses-banned-courts-england-wales/
5.  IBTimes UK" UK Court Service Bans Meta Smart Glasses After Restaurants, Theatres and Pubs Lead 'Spyware' Privacy Push." https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-courts-ban-meta-smart-glasses-privacy-concerns-18141
6. 97 Boing Boing, "English courts ban Meta glasses and other spyware." https://boingboing.net/2026/08/11/english-courts-ban-meta-glasses-and-other-spywear.html
7. MediaPost, "Meta Smart Glasses Banned In England, Wales Courtrooms." https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/417180/meta-smart-glasses-banned-in-england-wales-courtr.html
8. LiveLaw, "When Seeing Becomes Recording: Invisible Bystander And Limits Of Indian Privacy Law." https://www.livelaw.in/lawschool/articles/invisible-bystander-limits-indian-privacy-law-545517
9. PCQuest "B by Lenskart AI Glasses: India's Privacy Laws May Not Be Ready." https://www.pcquest.com/tech-trends/b-by-lenskart-ai-smart-glasses-india-privacy-dpdp-act-12141827
10. MediaNama, "Meta tightens AI glasses security as questions over bystander privacy persist." https://www.medianama.com/2026/07/223-meta-tightens-ai-glasses-security-questions-bystander-privacy-persist/
11. India Legal, "The State Of Surveillance." https://indialegallive.com/cover-story-articles/il-feature-news/surveillance-jantar-mantar-protests-delhi-police-wearable-recording-devices/
12. Feminism In India, "AI Glasses: Is India Ready To Handle The Privacy Implications?" https://feminisminindia.com/2026/07/29/is-india-ready-to-handle-ai-glasses-social-ethical-and-regulatory-governance/
13. LiveLaw, "Supreme Court Bans Photography, Videography In Court's High Security Zone." https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-bans-photography-videography-in-courts-high-security-zone-after-bars-concerns-over-reels-selfies-in-court-premises-303682
14. LiveLaw, "Supreme Court Bans Uploading and Sharing Of Audio-Video Recordings Of Court Hearings Without Prior Permission." https://www.livelaw.in/amp/top-stories/breaking-supreme-court-bans-uploading-sharing-of-audio-video-recordings-of-court-hearings-without-prior-permission-542719
15. Deccan Herald, "SC bans clicking photos, making reels in its high security zone." https://www.deccanherald.com/amp/story/india%2Fdelhi%2Fsc-bans-clicking-photos-making-reels-in-its-high-security-zone-3724668

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Executive Summary

A video of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that he supported the Bihar police and justified the encounter of Bharat Bhushan Tiwari in Bhojpur district’s Bilouti village on June 17, 2026. CyberPeace Research Wing research found the claim to be misleading. The viral video is not related to the Bihar encounter case. It is an old video from February 2026, in which the Chief Minister was speaking in the context of law and order and police action in Uttar Pradesh.

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Claim:
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A Facebook user shared the video claiming it shows CM Yogi Adityanath’s reaction supporting the Bihar encounter of Bharat Tiwari. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1712174420025092  ,https://archive.ph/wip/yUsou 

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Fact Check:
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A keyword search led to the same video being found on the ‘ET Now Swadesh’ YouTube channel in the form of a short video, uploaded on February 4, 2026, indicating that it predates the Bihar incident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj7ySFsnkqk 

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Further verification led to a Dainik Jagran report published on February 3, 2026, which carried visuals from the same statement. The report confirmed that the remarks were made in the context of Uttar Pradesh’s law and order situation and police response. https://www.jagran.com/uttar-pradesh/lucknow-city-cm-yogi-on-up-crime-zero-tolerance-and-police-action-justified-40129630.html 

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The report quoted CM Yogi Adityanath saying that if police do not act, criminals would dominate the situation, and that police are empowered to respond in the language criminals understand. He also emphasized that police training is designed to ensure effective response to crime. An Aaj Tak report on the Bihar encounter case stated that 28-year-old Bharat Tiwari was killed in an encounter on June 17, 2026, in Bhojpur district. Following the incident, an FIR was registered against police personnel, and the victim’s mother demanded strict action and justice.

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https://www.aajtak.in/bihar/story/encounter-action-and-mahapanchayat-bharat-tiwari-mother-said-hope-truth-will-come-out-lcla-strc-2586223-2026-06-24

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Conclusion:

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The research confirms that the viral video of CM Yogi Adityanath is old and unrelated to the Bihar encounter case. It is from February 2026 and pertains to a law-and-order statement in Uttar Pradesh. The video is being falsely shared by linking it to the Bihar encounter incident.

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