#FactCheck -Edited Newspaper Clipping Falsely Linked to Indira Gandhi’s Appeal Against Buying Gold
Executive Summary
A purported front page of The Hindu dated June 6, 1967, is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had urged Indians not to buy gold in any form and to follow “national discipline” by restricting gold consumption. The viral claim suggests that the appeal was part of the government’s efforts to conserve foreign exchange reserves, which were allegedly under severe pressure at the time. However, research conducted by CyberPeace Research Wing found the claim to be false. Our research revealed that the front page being circulated online is not authentic and has been digitally edited.
Claim
An X (formerly Twitter) user shared the viral newspaper clipping on May 12, 2026, and wrote:“In 1967, during a severe foreign exchange crisis, Indira Gandhi appealed to Indians not to buy gold.From ‘skip one meal’ to ‘don’t buy gold,’ Congress-era governance normalized shortages, restrictions, and sacrifice, while ordinary citizens paid the price for failed economic policies.”
Research
To verify the claim, we examined the official social media accounts of The Hindu. During the research, we found a post published on the publication’s official X account on May 12, 2026, clarifying that the viral image claiming to be the June 6, 1967 front page of The Hindu was digitally altered and not part of its official archives. The newspaper also urged readers to verify information carefully before sharing it online.
We also found an X post by B Kolappan, a journalist with The Hindu, who shared the original front page of the newspaper dated June 6, 1967, further exposing the viral image as fake.
For context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a public gathering on May 10, 2026, spoke about the possible economic impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and advised people to avoid buying gold for a year, even during weddings or family functions. The viral claim appears to have resurfaced in this backdrop.
Conclusion
Our research found that the alleged 1967 front page of The Hindu circulating on social media is digitally edited and fake. There is no evidence that the viral newspaper page is authentic or part of The Hindu’s archival records.
Related Blogs
Executive Summary
A video of actor Ranbir Kapoor is being shared on social media amid the ongoing Ganesh festivities across the country. The video is being shared with the claim that Ranbir Kapoor refused to accept prasad on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. CyberPeace Research found the claim to be misleading. Our research revealed that the viral video is from 2023. At the time, Ranbir Kapoor had attended a Ganpati puja at the T-Series office. After the puja, when he was handed a box of prasad, he gave the box to another person and said that he was on a diet.
Claim:
A user on the social media platform Facebook shared the video with the caption, “Ranbir Kapoor refused to eat prasad, saying, ‘I am on a diet.’” The post link, archive link and screenshot are provided below.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1563843065515757
Fact Check:
To verify the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. During the search, we found a report published on the Dainik Hindustan website. According to the report, the Ambani family once again hosted a Ganpati celebration.Several Bollywood celebrities, including Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Katrina Kaif and Alia Bhatt, attended the event. Photographs from the celebration were also shared on social media. However, the clothes worn by Ranbir Kapoor in the photographs featured in the report are different from those seen in the viral video. The report link and screenshot are provided below.
To verify the viral claim, we conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the video. During the search, we found the same video on the YouTube channel of Gujarati Midday, where it was published on September 25, 2023. The report link and screenshot are provided below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoBwpC-jr5A
According to the video description, actor Ranbir Kapoor, known for his role in the film ‘Animal’, visited the T-Series office for Ganpati darshan. Our research established that the video is from 2023 and is being shared on social media with a misleading claim by presenting it as a recent incident. At the end of our research, we found the same video on the YouTube channel of Ei Samay. It was published on September 25, 2023. The video also contains the same scene seen in the viral clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDsoRu8Aco
Conclusion
Our research found that the viral video is from 2023. At the time, Ranbir Kapoor attended a Ganpati puja at the T-Series office. After the puja, when he was handed a box of prasad, he gave the box to another person and said that he was on a diet.
Executive Summary
A video is being widely shared on social media with the claim that protesters during the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protest in Delhi pelted stones at India’s first hydrogen train. The viral video shows a train parked at a railway station being attacked with stones amid chaos and heavy commotion. Social media users are claiming that the incident took place at a Delhi railway station, where protesters targeted the country’s new hydrogen train during the CJP march towards Jantar Mantar and damaged public property. CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found the claim to be false. The viral video is not related to the CJP protest or India’s first hydrogen train. The video is from Bihar, where candidates appearing for a Bihar Police Prohibition Department examination had protested over train delays, leading to clashes and stone-pelting.
Claim:
A social media post claimed:“New Delhi: During the march towards Jantar Mantar, a video of stone-pelting on a hydrogen train parked at a railway station is going viral. Some people can be seen throwing stones at the train. Damaging public property is a punishable offence. Further action will be taken based on official information from authorities.”
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1573292581055475
Fact Check:
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we extracted keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search using Google Lens. During the research, we found the same video clip uploaded on the Facebook page News Bihar on June 14, 2026. According to the post’s caption, the incident took place at Danapur–Patliputra railway station in Patna, Bihar, where thousands of candidates appearing for the Bihar Police Prohibition Department examination became agitated due to train delays. The protest escalated after candidates blocked railway tracks, leading to a confrontation between police personnel and students, including stone-pelting.
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2476273089511309
During further research, we found a video uploaded by Republic World’s YouTube channel on June 14, 2026, which also contained visuals matching the viral clip. The report stated that students in Bihar staged an aggressive protest after trains were delayed. During the protest, clashes broke out between police and students, and authorities used mild force to control the situation.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AlamDZzPKLA
During our research, we also found a reply from the official X account of Northern Railway on a similar viral post. In its response, Northern Railway clarified that the train visible in the viral video was not a hydrogen train. The railway authority stated that the video was old and confirmed that hydrogen train services are operating safely and as per their scheduled timetable.
Conclusion:
CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found that the claim linking the viral video to stone-pelting on India’s first hydrogen train during the CJP protest is false. The viral video is from Bihar, where candidates appearing for the Bihar Police Prohibition Department examination protested over train delays, resulting in clashes and stone-pelting at a railway station. The video has been falsely linked to the CJP protest and hydrogen train.
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
