#FactCheck - Deepfake Video Falsely Claims Indian Defence Secretary Admitted Pakistan ‘Jammed Indian Systems’

Executive Summary

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A video of former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan is going viral on social media. The video is being shared with the claim that, referring to the losses suffered by India during Operation Sindoor, he said, “Even if we lose four aircraft or 40 aircraft, India will still remain a larger economy. What matters is your ability to recover from the losses. Whatever losses we suffered, we can recover much faster than Pakistan.” A research done by the Research Wing of the CyberPeace examined the claims made in the video and compared them with General Anil Chauhan’s original remarks at the event.The research found that the viral video’s audio has been digitally manipulated. The alleged statement heard in the viral clip does not appear in the original footage.

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Claim:

A Pakistani user on social media platform X shared the viral video with the caption: “BREAKING: Former Indian Chief of Defence Staff revealed details about the losses suffered during Operation Sindoor, saying, ‘Whatever losses we suffered are not important. What matters is that we can recover quickly.’”

The link to the post and a screenshot are provided below.

https://x.com/InsiderWB/status/2092559622225940952 

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Fact Check

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Upon closely examining the viral video, we noticed the ANI logo. We then conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the viral clip. During the search, we found the original video published by ANI, in which General Chauhan discusses the relationship between political objectives and military strategy.

https://x.com/ANI/status/2092217553355743409 

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He said, “Politics and war are inseparable.” He further explained that a nation’s political interests are paramount, while the armed forces are one of several instruments used to safeguard those interests. General Chauhan also discussed the role of military leadership in presenting various options to the political leadership, as well as the importance of peacetime preparedness and training. He also spoke about training, contingency planning, and the need to balance military risks with political objectives. Notably, the statement attributed to him in the viral video,“Whatever losses we suffered are not important. What matters is that we can recover quickly” — does not appear anywhere in the original video. Additionally, the audio used in the viral video was also analysed using Resemble AI. The tool’s analysis identified the audio as AI-generated, indicating that the audio in the viral clip had been manipulated.

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Conclusion

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The research found that General Chauhan’s voice in the viral video has been digitally manipulated. The alleged statement heard in the viral clip does not appear in the original video.

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On 25 September 2026, at UN Headquarters in New York, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar signed the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, calling it a step that "strengthens international cooperation for a safer digital future."

 The signature places India among the growing list of nations joining what is officially the first comprehensive global treaty dedicated to cybercrime. What Jaishankar's brief statement did not mention is that this same treaty has spent the better part of three years drawing sustained, detailed criticism from human rights organisations, technology companies, and digital rights groups, who argue it risks becoming a tool for surveillance rather than a tool against crime.

A Conversation CyberPeace Has Been Having for Years

For CyberPeace, India’s signature is not an isolated development but the latest chapter in a conversation the organisation has been following since the Convention was still being negotiated.

In December 2024, CyberPeace published its analysis of the emerging UN Convention against Cybercrime, examining its objectives, proposed offences, mechanisms for international cooperation, electronic evidence and its relationship with the Budapest Convention. The analysis also highlighted an important principle embedded in the emerging framework: that stronger cybercrime enforcement must operate alongside due process, privacy and human-rights safeguards.

That conversation continued in October 2025, when CyberPeace published The Digital Leviathan: The UN Cybercrime Treaty and the Future of Global Governance. The piece examined the Convention not merely as a cybercrime instrument, but as part of a larger evolution in global digital governance, particularly around cross-border evidence, international cooperation and the changing architecture of cyber sovereignty.

And in August 2026, CyberPeace returned to the question from the operational side in The World Is Rewriting the Rules Against Cyber-Enabled Transnational Crime. The analysis placed the Convention alongside the wider international response to transnational cyber-enabled crime, including scam networks, financial fraud and increasingly sophisticated criminal ecosystems that operate across multiple jurisdictions.

What the Convention actually is

The treaty's full, formal title is unusually descriptive for a UN instrument: the United Nations Convention against Cybercrime, Strengthening International Cooperation for Combating Certain Crimes Committed by Means of Information and Communications Technology Systems and for the Sharing of Evidence in Electronic Form of Serious Crimes. The UN General Assembly adopted it unanimously on 24 December 2024, following three years of negotiation, and it opened for signature at a ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam, in October 2025. It will remain open for signature at UN Headquarters through 31 December 2026, and comes into force ninety days after the fortieth country ratifies it.

At its core, the Convention gives signatory states a shared legal framework for two things: preventing and prosecuting offences committed through digital systems, and cooperating across borders when evidence, offenders, or victims of a crime are scattered across multiple jurisdictions, a structural problem that has long frustrated cybercrime investigations. It also includes provisions specifically addressing the recovery of criminal proceeds, adding a financial dimension that lets states cooperate not just on prosecuting offenders but on tracing and reclaiming stolen money that has moved across borders, often through mule accounts and shell transactions designed to outrun any single country's jurisdiction.

Why India signed, in its own words

Jaishankar's public reasoning was concise. Cybercrime, in the government's framing, does not respect national boundaries, and India's own cybercrime caseload, spanning cross-border financial fraud, romance scams, and organised online extortion networks often operating from outside India's borders, has repeatedly run into exactly the jurisdictional walls this Convention is designed to lower. Prof. Triveni Singh, a well known cybercrime expert and former IPS officer, put the practical case plainly: "Cybercrime does not stop at national borders. Criminals can operate from one country and target victims in another. This convention can help countries share evidence and work together faster. For India, stronger international cooperation can make it easier to investigate cross-border cyber fraud and trace stolen money." 

The part the announcement leaves out

Here is where the story gets considerably more complicated than a signing ceremony photo suggests. Since before the Convention's text was even finalised, a wide coalition of digital rights organisations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the Global Network Initiative, and Privacy International, has warned that the treaty's language is dangerously broad, and that its safeguards against misuse are considerably weaker than they need to be.

Cisco, one of the few major technology companies to comment publicly, stated the Convention does not do enough to "sufficiently protect basic human rights." UN Secretary-General António Guterres, notably, has himself urged countries to sign and ratify the Convention while simultaneously calling for its implementation to be "rooted in human rights," a somewhat unusual dual message from the very institution that produced the text, and one that implicitly acknowledges the concerns raised against it.

Where this leaves India

None of this means India's signature was unwarranted. The jurisdictional friction Prof. Triveni Singh described is real and well documented, and a shared international framework for evidence sharing genuinely could accelerate investigations that currently stall for months while agencies wait on slow, bilateral mutual legal assistance requests. India's existing domestic cybercrime coordination architecture is already substantial, spanning I4C, the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, and newer mechanisms like the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System and the Sahyog platform, and a global treaty that maps onto this existing infrastructure could genuinely close gaps that purely domestic tools cannot reach, particularly in cases where the perpetrator, the server, and the victim all sit in different countries, a pattern that has become close to the default in organised online financial fraud rather than the exception.

But the criticisms levelled at the Convention are not fringe objections; they come from some of the most established digital rights organisations in the world, and they focus specifically on the treaty's most powerful surveillance and cross-border cooperation provisions, the very mechanisms India will now need to operationalise domestically. Signing the Convention is also only the first procedural step; India's obligations under it will not take practical effect until the instrument is ratified domestically, a process that typically allows room for a signatory state to clarify how broadly or narrowly it intends to apply the treaty's more expansive provisions. How India chooses to implement those provisions, whether through the kind of judicial oversight and narrow, offence-specific application human rights groups have called for, or through the broader interpretation the treaty's text technically permits, will likely determine whether this Convention becomes a genuine tool against fraud and organised cybercrime, or a broader instrument whose reach eventually extends well past the digital offences it was signed to address.

References

• The420.in, "India Signs UN Cybercrime Convention to Strengthen Global Fight Against Digital Crime." ANI, "EAM Jaishankar signs UN Convention against Cybercrime on UNGA sidelines." https://aninews.in/news/world/us/eam-jaishankar-signs-un-convention-against-cybercrime-on-unga-sidelines20260926063207/
• Ministry of Cyber Affairs, "India signs UN Convention against Cybercrime at UNGA 81." https://ministryofcyberaffairs.com/news/india-signs-un-convention-against-cybercrime-at-unga-81-95b7e43b-7e29-4722-a4a7-304bca55b71c
•  Electronic Frontier Foundation, "UN Cybercrime Convention Negotiations Enter Final Phase With Troubling Surveillance Powers Still on the Table."  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/un-cybercrime-convention-negotiations-enter-final-phase-troubling-surveillance
• Electronic Frontier Foundation, "First Draft of UN Cybercrime Convention Drops Troubling Provisions, But Dangerous And Open-Ended Cross Border Surveillance Powers Are Still on the Table."
• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/first-draft-un-cybercrime-treaty-drops-troubling-provisions-dangerous-and-open
• Global Network Initiative, "GNI Calls on Member States Not to Support the UN Cybercrime Convention." https://globalnetworkinitiative.org/gni-statement-on-uncc/
• Just Security, "The UN Cybercrime Convention: Analyzing the Risks to Human Rights and Global Privacy." https://www.justsecurity.org/98738/cybercrime-convention-human-rights/
• TechRadar Pro, "UN cybercrime convention inadequate, says Human Rights Watch." https://techradar.com/pro/un-cybercrime-convention-inadequate-says-human-rights-watch
• Digital Watch Observatory, "Comparative analysis: the Budapest Convention vs the UN Convention Against Cybercrime." https://dig.watch/updates/comparative-analysis-the-budapest-convention-vs-the-un-convention-against-cybercrime
• epicenter.works, "Cybercrime Convention: Cross-Border Human Rights Violations." https://epicenter.works/en/content/cybercrime-convention-cross-border-human-rights-violations
• UN Press, "Secretary-General Urges All Countries to Sign, Ratify New UN Convention against Cybercrime, Calls for Solutions Rooted in Human Rights." https://press.un.org/en/2025/sgsm22961.doc.htm
• https://cyberpeace.org/resources/blogs/the-digital-leviathan-the-un-cybercrime-treaty-and-the-future-of-global-governance 
• https://cyberpeace.org/resources/blogs/the-world-is-rewriting-the-rules-against-cyber-enabled-transnational-crime 

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Executive Summary:

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A photoshopped image circulating online suggests Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with militant leader Hafiz Saeed. The actual photograph features PM Modi greeting former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during a surprise diplomatic stopover in Lahore on December 25, 2015.

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The Claim:

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A widely shared image on social media purportedly shows PM Modi meeting Hafiz Saeed, a declared terrorist. The claim implies Modi is hostile towards India or aligned with terrorists.

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Fact Check:

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On our research and reverse image search we found that the Press Information Bureau (PIB) had tweeted about the visit on 25 December 2015, noting that PM Narendra Modi was warmly welcomed by then-Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. The tweet included several images from various angles of the original meeting between Modi and Sharif. On the same day, PM Modi also posted a tweet stating he had spoken with Nawaz Sharif and extended birthday wishes. Additionally, no credible reports of any meeting between Modi and Hafiz Saeed, further validating that the viral image is digitally altered.

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In our further research we found an identical photo, with former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in place of Hafiz Saeed. This post was shared by Hindustan Times on X on 26 December 2015, pointing to the possibility that the viral image has been manipulated.

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Conclusion:

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The viral image claiming to show PM Modi with Hafiz Saeed is digitally manipulated. A reverse image search and official posts from the PIB and PM Modi confirm the original photo was taken during Modi’s visit to Lahore in December 2015, where he met Nawaz Sharif. No credible source supports any meeting between Modi and Hafiz Saeed, clearly proving the image is fake.

• Claim: Debunking the Edited Image Claim of PM Modi with Hafiz Saeed
• Claimed On: Social Media
• Fact Check: False and Misleading

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