#FactCheck -AI-generated video falsely shows a monk walking among lions in a forest
Executive Summary
A video is being widely shared on social media showing a monk walking through a dense forest, with several lions seen around him. Users sharing the video claim that the monk is fearlessly walking among lions. CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found that the viral claim is false. The research revealed that the video is not real and was created using artificial intelligence (AI).
Claim
An Instagram user shared the viral video on July 27, 2026, claiming that a video of a monk fearlessly walking among several lions in a forest is going viral on social media. The caption accompanying the post reads:
"A video of a baba fearlessly passing through several lions in the jungle is rapidly going viral on social media. After watching the video, people are linking it with faith, courage and divine power. However, the authenticity of the video and the circumstances shown in it have not been independently verified.
Therefore, before considering it a miracle, viewers should exercise caution and verify the source and facts before believing any viral video. What do you think—faith, courage or something else?"
The post link, archive link and screenshot are provided below:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbTOIuRRYFe/
FactCheck
To verify the claim, we conducted a keyword search on Google. During the search, we did not find any credible media reports confirming the viral claim. Upon closely examining the viral video, we suspected that it could have been created using AI. We then analysed the video using the AI detection tool Sightengine. According to the tool’s analysis, the video has a 99 per cent probability of being AI-generated.
In the next step of our research , we scanned the viral video using another AI detection tool, WasIt AI. The results indicated that the video was generated using artificial intelligence.
Finally, we analysed the video using the AI detection tool AI or Not, which also concluded that the viral video was created with the help of AI.
Conclusion
CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found that the viral claim is false. The video showing a monk walking among lions in a dense forest is not authentic but an AI-generated creation. The video is being shared with a misleading claim.
Related Blogs
Executive Summary
Talks between the United States and Iran over a ceasefire reportedly held in Islamabad on Saturday ended without a resolution. Meanwhile, a video circulating on social media claims to show US troops returning home following a ceasefire in the Middle East conflict.
However, a research by the CyberPeace found the claim to be false. The viral video is not linked to any recent ceasefire. It actually dates back to March and shows the return of Iowa National Guard troops after months of deployment in the Middle East.
Claim
An X (formerly Twitter) user posted the video on April 7, 2026, claiming,“Another victory for Iran: American soldiers have started arriving home. After leaving the Middle East, American soldiers are saying, ‘Why did we fight for Israel? If Iran is talking about peace, we will also stand with them.’”
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search using Google Lens. This led us to posts by Newsradio 1040 WHO, which had shared the same footage on March 12 across Facebook and Instagram.
In its caption, the radio station stated that nearly 600 Iowa soldiers had returned home after a nine-month deployment in the Middle East as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. The segment, narrated by journalist Claire Burnett, explained that the soldiers belonged to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, and had been deployed to Iraq and Syria. The footage was recorded at the 132nd Wing base of the Iowa Air National Guard in Des Moines.
For further confirmation, a March 12 report by KCCI 8 News also showed the same aircraft and troops, verifying the authenticity and timeline of the footage
Operation Inherent Resolve, launched in 2014, is a US-led campaign aimed at supporting local forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS) and ensuring its lasting defeat.
https://www.kcci.com/article/iowans-welcome-national-guard-unit-home-from-deployment-in-middle-east/70729105
Conclusion
The viral claim is false and misleading. The video does not show US troops returning due to any recent ceasefire between the United States and Iran. Instead, it captures the routine homecoming of Iowa National Guard soldiers in March after completing a scheduled deployment in the Middle East.There is no evidence linking the footage to current geopolitical developments or any ceasefire agreement. The claim has been taken out of context and shared with a misleading narrative to create confusion around ongoing international events.
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Introduction
Imagine spending two years , 730 days of early mornings, missed social events, and relentless mock tests preparing for a single examination. Now imagine that on the morning of that exam, your phone buzzes with a forwarded video claiming the question paper has already leaked. Your heart sinks. You do not know whether to trust it or ignore it. You have about forty minutes before you must enter the hall. This was the reality for a section of the 22 lakh students who sat for the NEET UG 2026 re-examination on June 21, 2026, when a fabricated video alleging a paper leak on Telegram began circulating across WhatsApp groups and X within hours of the exam commencing. The National Testing Agency (NTA) swiftly and categorically denied the claims, activated the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), and appealed to the public not to amplify unverified content. The examination concluded without incident. But the episode laid bare a challenge that no security perimeter or surveillance camera can fully address: the weaponisation of misinformation against India's high-stakes examination ecosystem.
The Anatomy of Examination Misinformation
Why Examinations Are a Prime Target
India's national examinations are uniquely fertile ground for misinformation. With over 22 lakh candidates registered for NEET UG 2026 alone, the audience is vast, anxious, and hungry for any update verified or otherwise. Research by MIT has found that false stories spread six times faster than accurate ones on social media, and are seventy percent more likely to be reshared. In India, where over 535 million people use WhatsApp and studies show that most users tend to trust messages forwarded by family and friends, the conditions for viral misinformation are near-ideal. According to a 2020 Microsoft survey, 52 percent of Indian respondents encountered misinformation at least once a day, the highest rate globally.
What makes examination-related misinformation especially dangerous is its timing. Fabricated content is almost always released on examination day itself, the precise moment when candidates are most emotionally vulnerable, official channels are stretched thin, and the window for effective rebuttal is narrowest. The NEET UG 2026 fake video, circulated on Telegram and amplified across closed WhatsApp groups, fits this pattern precisely. It was engineered not to inform, but to destabilise.
A History That Sharpens the Anxiety
This misinformation did not emerge in a vacuum. The shadow of the 2024 NEET UG controversy in which the Supreme Court of India confirmed that at least 155 students had directly benefited from a genuine paper leak, and which triggered nationwide protests, CBI investigations, and a parliamentary uproar — still looms large. Students and parents conditioned by that experience are primed to believe the worst, even when claims are entirely false. In 2026, that residual anxiety became the very vulnerability that bad actors sought to exploit. The government's response which included temporarily restricting access to Telegram in the lead-up to the re-examination underscored just how seriously the threat of examination misinformation is now being taken at the highest levels.
The NTA's Response: Why It Matters
- Speed and Transparency as Governance Tools: In crisis communication, the first credible voice usually wins. The NTA's near-immediate public denial posted on official social media handles and amplified by the Press Information Bureau's PIB Fact Check unit was a meaningful departure from the delayed, defensive responses that characterised earlier examination controversies. By directly labelling the video "FAKE" in capital letters, describing its creation as "a serious offence," and simultaneously appealing to students to rely only on official sources at neet.nta.nic.in, the NTA left little room for the false narrative to consolidate. NTA Director General Abhishek Singh went further, publicly stating that the agency was "100 per cent confident" in the integrity of the process and that no complaints of a genuine paper leak had been received. This matters beyond crisis management. Public trust in examination systems is not rebuilt through official statements alone , it is rebuilt through the consistent, transparent exercise of institutional authority. A swift, fact-based rebuttal, deployed before rumour hardens into public belief, is as much a governance act as it is a communications strategy.
- Cybercrime Coordination as a Structural Shift: Perhaps the most significant development in the NTA's response was its coordination with I4C and law enforcement agencies to trace the origin of the fabricated video. This signals a structural evolution: examination misinformation is no longer being treated as an administrative inconvenience but as cybercrime with legal consequences under the Information Technology Act, 2000. The announcement that legal action would follow also carries a deterrent message to potential future actors — that the machinery of cybercrime enforcement will be activated, and that fabricating content to mislead examination candidates is a prosecutable offence.
The Human and Institutional Cost
The costs of examination misinformation are neither abstract nor trivial. Mental health experts have warned that controversies surrounding national-level examinations can have serious long-term psychological consequences for aspirants. Dr. Mustafa Nadeem Kirmani of Amity University has noted that such crises increase the risk of students taking "extreme steps like suicide attempts, anger toward the system, and hopelessness," and can, in the long run, lead to clinical depression. In the wake of the 2026 paper leak controversy, multiple reports of student deaths by suicide were linked to the compounded pressures of exam cancellation and uncertainty a grim reminder of the real human stakes behind governance failures in this domain. For institutions, every viral misinformation episode generates an avoidable administrative crisis. Helplines are overwhelmed, examination centre staff face panicked queries, and senior officials are pulled into damage control rather than exam administration. The credibility of clarifications issued under pressure is itself questioned by a public already primed for suspicion. This administrative burden, multiplied across 5,440 examination centres in India and 14 abroad, represents a significant and entirely unnecessary cost.
Building a Resilient Ecosystem: What Needs to Change
- Proactive Communication and Platform Coordination: Institutional credibility is built before a crisis, not during one. Examination bodies must invest in sustained pre-examination communication that educates candidates and parents about the existence of misinformation campaigns and tells them exactly where to look for verified updates. This means highly visible, verified social media presences with large followings, real-time update protocols, and formal escalation channels with platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, X, and YouTube to enable rapid takedown of false examination-related content. The IT Amendment Rules of 2023, which require significant social media intermediaries to act on government-flagged content, provide a legal basis for such coordination but the operational infrastructure to activate it at speed must be built in advance, not improvised on the day.
- Fact-Checking Partnerships and Digital Literacy: Independent organisations such as BOOM Live, Alt News, and Vishvas News have proven their capacity to rapidly debunk examination misinformation. Formalising their role through a structured public-private partnership where examination authorities share real-time verified information with empanelled fact-checkers could close the window during which false content circulates unchallenged. Equally critical is investment in digital media literacy among students and parents. A 2018 survey found that nearly 45 percent of Indian respondents were unaware of any fact-checking organisations. Addressing this gap through school curricula, coaching networks, and the Ministry of Education's DIKSHA platform is a preventive investment far less costly than repeated crisis management.
Conclusion
The NTA's handling of the NEET UG 2026 fake video was, by recent standards, exemplary. It was fast, transparent, authoritative, and backed by the activation of cybercrime enforcement. But a single well-managed episode does not constitute a resilient system. India runs some of the world's largest entrance examinations, and the stakes medical seats, livelihoods, and the aspirations of crores of young people are too high for crisis response alone to suffice. Combating examination misinformation requires permanent structural investment: dedicated rapid-response cells within examination bodies, formalised fact-checking pipelines, proactive platform coordination, and a sustained public education effort around digital verification. Protecting the integrity of India's examination ecosystem is not merely an administrative responsibility. It is a commitment to the millions of students who give everything they have to compete fairly and who deserve a system that protects them not only from cheating, but from the fear of it.
References
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/131900261.cms
- https://www.india.com/education/neet-ug-2026-re-exam-paper-leak-claim-goes-viral-nta-says-video-is-fake-and-false-fabricated-examination-conducted-successfully-8453620/
- https://www.republicworld.com/education/neet-ug-re-exam-nta-says-paper-leak-video-fake-test-conducted-successfully-2026-06-22-129346
- https://thefederal.com/category/education/neet-re-exam-paper-leak-admission-system-crisis-247410
- https://www.outlookindia.com/healthcare-spotlight/beyond-the-paper-leak-emotional-trauma-among-neet-aspirants-raises-concern
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_NEET_controversy
- https://kaval.chat/blog/misinformation-scam-statistics-india-2026/
- https://www.ijert.org/the-virality-gap-political-misinformation-and-the-information-crisis-in-india-s-digital-democracy-ijertv15is050041
- https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap9559 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/digital-skills/digital-civility
- https://www.meity.gov.in/content/information-technology-intermediary-guidelines-and-digital-media-ethics-code-amendment
- https://www.indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/1999
- https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx
- https://www.careerindia.com/news/addressing-the-mental-health-crisis-sparked-by-net-and-neet-paper-leaked-in-india-041963.html
- https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/indias-growing-misinformation-crisis-a-threat-to-democracy/
Executive Summary:
Amid escalating tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a video is being widely shared on social media claiming that Afghanistan has shot down a Pakistani fighter jet. The posts further allege that the incident marks the formal beginning of a war between the two countries. However, research conducted by the CyberPeace found the viral claim to be false and the research revealed that the circulating video is not authentic but AI-generated.
Claim
On February 24, 2026, a user on X (formerly Twitter) shared the viral video with the caption: “Afghanistan has shot down a Pakistani fighter jet! Afghanistan announces that war with Pakistan has begun.”
- Original post link: https://x.com/JyotiDevSpeaks/status/2026348257186545914
- Archived link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/7l00Y
Fact Check:
A careful review of the viral video revealed unusual visual patterns and artificial-looking effects, raising suspicions that it may have been created using artificial intelligence.We analyzed the video using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated an 86 percent probability that the video was AI-generated.
To further verify the findings, we scanned the footage using another AI detection platform, Sightengine. The results showed a 99 percent likelihood that the video was AI-generated.
To understand the broader context of the ongoing tensions, we conducted a keyword search and found a report published on February 22, 2026, by BBC Hindi. According to the report, Pakistan claimed it had targeted “seven terrorist hideouts and camps” along the Pakistan–Afghanistan border based on intelligence inputs. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Taliban government in Afghanistan stated that Pakistani airstrikes in Nangarhar and Paktika provinces resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, including women and children.
- https://www.bbc.com/hindi/articles/clyz8141397o
Conclusion
Our research confirms that the viral video claiming Afghanistan shot down a Pakistani fighter jet and formally declared war on Pakistan is fake. The footage is AI-generated and is being circulated with a false and misleading narrative.
