#FactCheck- Viral ‘Modi Massage Video’ Claim False, Features Content Creators

Introduction

Recently, the Delhi Police arrested a licensed telecom PoS agent, who identified himself as “Shivam Telecom," from a roadside kiosk adjacent to Hindu Rao Hospital. On the face of it, the headline may have simply read, “One man, one arrest." However, beneath that arrest is the unsettling story of a fully legitimate retail shop actively forging other people’s identification documents into weapons, one SIM card at a time, for as little as ₹500-600 each. This is not an account of an isolated offender; it is a peek into the vulnerability of SIM card security for typical end-users and the reasons why every mobile phone subscriber must pay attention to the unseen journey of his number.

 Why SIM Security Matters Now

Erstwhile, a SIM card was only a simple device for sending text messages and making calls. Today, however, it’s also a direct link to most of our lives online, be it online banking to verify it through one-time passwords (OTP) or Unified Payments Interface (UPI); social media platforms; or email accounts to reset a forgotten password, two-factor authentications (2FA), or even numerous other online services. Therefore, losing a SIM card and getting it fraudulently issued under your name, or criminals accessing your identity to buy a SIM, can be a serious cause of concern, as they can then impersonate you, conduct various frauds, bypass checks, or commit acts that can lead to you being wrongly implicated.

According to the investigation, criminals were procuring SIM cards through the authorized outlets of telecom companies, not unlicensed dealers. This clearly proves a deficiency in the Know Your Customer (KYC) process for the SIM card activation. The situation, however, is worse and is also highlighted by the fact that more than 21 lakh mobile numbers from the more than 114 crore mobile numbers reviewed under the Sanchar Saathi initiative launched by the department of telecommunications (DoT) were associated with fake or invalid identity documents. A state police chief of Tamil Nadu claims that 90% of the cyber fraud cases involved SIM cards obtained through misused identity documents.

How Illegally Activated SIMs Fuel Everyday Scams?

Once a SIM is activated using someone else's identity documents or biometric data, without their knowledge, it becomes a disposable, hard-to-trace tool for criminals. Here's how that plays out in practice:

1. Phishing and impersonation calls: Using an honest person’s details for a SIM registration allows the scammer to have a “clean” number that won’t tip off victims about a potential scam immediately when carrying out a fake bank call, fake delivery scam, or fake impersonation of an officer.
2. OTP and account-takeover fraud:  Since the SIM card is used as the anchor to OTP verification, an unauthorized SIM can be used to capture one-time passwords to activate new digital payments, create a new digital payments account, or use other personal information linked to your phone number to reset your service passwords.
3. Financial fraud and money mule networks: According to the investigators, such SIMs were extensively being used to open digital payment accounts as well as to flow money across a number of fraud chains, thus enabling the fraudsters to build a layer of financial infrastructure that is not linked with their actual identities.
4. Identity theft with real-world consequences: The identity of the Aadhaar holder (whose document was used to activate the SIM card) might be unaware that a SIM exists under his name until the fraud is uncovered during a loan default or a criminal investigation where he is forced to justify a crime committed using “his” number that he is oblivious to. 

That is the anonymity that SIM-card fraud has: the fact that the SIM on the face of it seems genuine, but the one operating it and the registered owner have absolutely no relationship whatsoever.

Red Flags Every Mobile User Should Watch For

Most people won't know their identity has been misused until something goes visibly wrong. A few warning signs are worth taking seriously:

1. Your SIM suddenly loses network connectivity or displays "No Service" for an extended period without any known outage, SIM replacement request, or billing issue.
2. You stop receiving OTPs or verification messages for banking, UPI, or other online services, particularly if login attempts continue to occur on your accounts.
3. You receive unexpected OTPs, verification codes, or account alerts for services you never signed up for, indicating that someone may be attempting to use your mobile number.
4. You receive calls or messages intended for someone else or asking you to confirm activities you never performed, which may suggest your number has been misused or duplicated.
5. Your bank or telecom provider notifies you of unusual account activity, failed identity verification, or changes that you did not authorize.
6. You discover multiple mobile connections registered in your name that you never requested, a risk that often remains unnoticed unless you proactively check through the Department of Telecommunications' Sanchar Saathi portal.

None of these guarantee fraud, but any of them is a reason to check further rather than assume it's a glitch.

Practical Steps to Protect Yourself

The good news is that Indian users now have direct tools to check and control this exposure:

1. Identify your SIMs: Via the Department of Telecom’s Sanchar Saathi website, you can access a list of all mobile numbers registered in your name. Report and get any SIMs you do not recognize deactivated promptly.
2. Safeguard your identity documents and biometrics: Do not disclose your Aadhaar information, OTPs, or biometrics to unofficial persons or retail agents. Ensure your SIM is activated in your presence by an official dealer of the telecom company.
3. Tighten the security of your accounts: Wherever possible, use the most secure multi-factor authentication methods; an authenticator app, rather than just SMS, would be ideal. Consider enabling account change or SIM swap notifications from your telecom provider.
4. Stay vigilant about your bank accounts and financial activities. Watch for unusual OTP requests, password change requests, login notifications, and unrecognized devices being logged into your online accounts. Being observant early on helps minimize losses.
5. Take swift action if a SIM stops working: Contact your telecom provider and report the misuse to the Sanchar Saathi website as well as your nearest cyber station, or file a complaint through the cybercrime helpline number.

A Shared Responsibility

Consumer vigilance is not enough to save the system. Telecom providers must verify customer authenticity and check their retail points sufficiently so that a roadside vendor of the likes of “Shivam Telecom” cannot have their retail outlet anywhere the retail outlets may not need to be established and can be run even from an abandoned car body on the street for weeks. Authorities are ensuring this by making all franchisees and PoS agents and distributors register, such that the individual activating each SIM is perfectly identifiable. Consumers should take precautions and report suspicious patterns and be vigilant for fraud detection and protect themselves by knowing the system, like the use of the Sanchar Saathi platform.

Conclusion

The Delhi fake SIM case proves that even sophisticated technologies are not enough to protect India’s telecom ecosystem. No amount of biometric validation, AI fraud prevention tools, or rigid KYC compliance can offset a single corrupt agent selling SIM cards over the counter. While law enforcement works to clamp down, the responsibility also falls upon consumers, who need to regularly monitor their SIM registrations, safeguard their identity, and report any suspicious transactions in time to minimize the threat of identity theft and SIM-based cybercrime.

Sources

• https://www.prokerala.com/news/articles/a1784141.html 
• https://the420.in/dots-sanchar-saathi-initiative-exposes-21-lakh-sim-cards-activated-illegally 
•  https://www.sancharsaathi.gov.in/ 
•  https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2113857 
• https://www.business-standard.com/amp/industry/news/nearly-4-million-sims-deactivated-as-govt-cracks-down-on-digital-fraud-125080500300_1.html 
• https://www.digit.in/news/telecom/here-are-5-new-sim-card-rules-implemented-by-dot-amid-rising-scams-and-frauds.html 

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Executive Summary:

A video from an India TV news show related to the Assam elections is going viral on social media. In the clip, anchor Meenakshi Joshi is allegedly seen claiming that there is a rift between the BJP and the RSS in Assam. The video further suggests that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that former Congress members have taken over the BJP, and that RSS volunteers would not work for the party in Assam. However, a research  by the CyberPeace found that the viral video is edited and misleading. The original video contains no such claims.

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Claim:

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A social media user Ajit Singh shared the video on X with the caption:“The core idea of today’s BJP is to capture power by any means. We have been saying this for long, and now even RSS has accepted that BJP in Assam has been taken over by Congress mindset.”

• https://x.com/AjitDeolINC/status/2035287267666014693?s=20 
• https://archive.ph/nNJHy 

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Fact Check:

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To verify the claim, we searched relevant keywords about the alleged letter by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, we found no credible media reports supporting this claim. We then checked the YouTube channel of India TV but could not find the viral clip there. During the search, we did find a similar video from Meenakshi Joshi’s show. In the beginning of that video, the portion seen in the viral clip appears.

• https://youtu.be/EMzio7VLW0?si=wF8FYitbUqCgqSlF 

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In the original video, the anchor is discussing the announcement of election dates in five states. There is no mention of any rift between the BJP and RSS in Assam.

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Conclusion:

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The viral India TV video claiming a rift between the BJP and RSS in Assam is edited and misleading. The original broadcast was about election dates in five states and did not include any such claims.

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Introduction

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By the morning of May 19, 2026, many Indians woke up to see a worrying message being circulated on WhatsApp and X (formerly Twitter) stating that the government proposed to appropriate all gold stored in the temples, convert it to cash by some new scheme, and further, regard temple towers, doors, etc., gilded with gold as the "Strategic Gold Reserves of India." The panic spread immediately; religious communities were enraged, and online arguments broke out. By afternoon, the rumour was out of control. The catch was that this whole thing was false.

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The Rise of Misinformation: An Old Problem with a New Engine

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Misinformation is an ancient phenomenon. Folk scholars have observed for centuries that fabrications, rumours, and hoaxes move through the same channels and follow the same patterns as reliable news, deriving their credibility from repetition rather than proof and relying on social networks for believability.

A seminal 2017 study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives by Allcott and Gentzkow discovered that fake news articles were far more widely shared than the most popular legitimate news articles in the run-up to the 2016 United States presidential election. The study additionally discovered that nearly 62% of all American adults get at least a fraction of their news through social media, a reality the researchers posited would allow fake news to spread wide and far through unvetted channels. 

India is an even more extreme case; on a platform such as WhatsApp, where researcher Kiran Garimella, working for MIT, estimates that 50 billion messages are transmitted every single day in India alone, misinformation is less something that spreads and more something that simply exists.

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The Science of Viral Misinformation

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The temple gold rumour took a course typical of conspiracy theories. A dramatic, provocative rumour that simultaneously appealed to religious, state, and financial safety was received by an audience already conditioned to mistrust its leaders. In Science, 2018, MIT researchers Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral mapped the very mechanism at scale: it revealed false information to propagate about six times more than true information, reaching about three times as many people. The study further concluded that falsehoods were 70% more likely to be shared than true stories and that the 'engine' of false information spread was not bots and algorithms but humans. The simple reason was that humans prefer something that is novel, surprising, and alarming. 

Pariser further elaborated this process within his book Filter Bubble; as algorithms mainly show users what conforms with their existing beliefs, people are put in individual echo chambers, and their tendency to share emotional or falsified content results in corrections often failing to keep up.

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The Importance of Fact-Checking and Official Sources

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The government reacted to this with a swift and concise response, and an official statement released by the Ministry of Finance on 19 May 2026 cautioned citizens that all legal government policies are declared only through official press releases, government websites, and appropriate agencies and not via social media forwards.

India has a dedicated institutional resource for exactly this purpose. The PIB Fact Check Unit (FCU), established in November 2019 under the Press Information Bureau, has now published over 2,900 fact-checks covering false claims about government policies, schemes, deepfakes, AI-generated content, fabricated notifications, and fraudulent websites. Citizens can submit suspicious content directly to the FCU via WhatsApp (+91 8799711259) or through factcheck.pib.gov.in: The service is free, confidential, and designed to be accessible.

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The Risks of Sharing Unverified Information

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Beyond confusion and unnecessary anxiety, the spread of unverified information carries concrete risks. Allcott and Gentzkow's research found that individuals who consumed more ideologically homogeneous information were substantially more likely to believe false headlines, a pattern that holds regardless of education or political affiliation. 

In India, where WhatsApp research has documented that approximately 13% of images shared in politically active groups constitute known misinformation, the consequences have at times extended well beyond digital confusion.

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Advisory for Citizens: Verify, Inoculate, and Share Responsibly

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Becoming responsible digital citizens is more than just exercising passive vigilance. An important concept every digital citizen ought to know was formulated by John Cook, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Ullrich Ecker in a 2017 PLOS ONE paper: it is called "prebunking."

Debunking seeks to counter a falsehood once it is believed, while prebunking builds resilience in advance of the exposure, similar to how a vaccine inoculates the body to protect against a disease. Prebunking is implemented through an inoculation technique wherein individuals are warned about the presence of likely future misinformation, about the subject and the typical manipulative tactics that the misinformation may use. Exposure, even in an attenuated form, arms individuals with the wherewithal to recognise and disregard the actual misinformation once it appears. What this means in practice is that informed, aware citizens, capable of analysing how misinformation is crafted, are unlikely to fall for a new rumour of this nature.

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What should be kept in mind?

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• Wait before sharing: A prompt sense of fear, anger, or desire to share a post is not a call to immediate dissemination but an exercise in caution.
• Prebunk yourself and others: Be mindful of subjects that persistently generate falsehoods like government schemes, religious matters, economic policy, and national security.
• Refer to official sources only: The authenticity of claims related to any government scheme can be cross-checked on PIB.gov.in, relevant ministries, or the PIB Fact Check WhatsApp number, 8799711259.
• Identify filter bubbles: Repeated confirmation of your own beliefs and concerns indicates an algorithmic bubble.
• Do not amplify ambiguity: Circulating information merely as a matter of cautious verification has damaging repercussions.
• Rectify what has been shared: Issue the correction to the same recipients as the false information.

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Conclusion

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The swift clarifications issued by the government in May 2026 and fact-check systems by PIB have helped contain the panic, but the role of the government cannot be seen as the sole bulwark against misinformation. An informed citizenry, digitally and information literate to such an extent that they know how misinformation is created and circulated, is our strongest defence against fake news. It is not only the ability to fact-check but also to detect manipulative attempts before misinformation goes viral. Check before you share. Stop before you panic. When in doubt, check the PIB Fact Check.

References

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[1]https://thefederal.com/category/news/centre-rejects-rumours-on-temple-gold-monetisation-scheme-243686

[2]https://aninews.in/news/business/govt-dismisses-reports-on-temple-gold-monetisation-says-claims-are-false-and-baseless20260519103120/

[3] https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2247720

[4] Allcott, Hunt and Matthew Gentzkow. (2017). "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election." Journal of Economic Perspectives 31(2): 211–23

[5] Vosoughi, Soroush, Deb Roy, and Sinan Aral. (2018). "The Spread of True and False News Online." Science 359(6380): 1146–1151

[6] Cook, John, Stephan Lewandowsky, and Ullrich K. H. Ecker. (2017). "Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence." PLOS ONE 12(5): e0175799. 

[7] Garimella, Kiran and Dean Eckles. (2020/2023). "Images and Misinformation in Political Groups: Evidence from WhatsApp in India.

[8] Christakis, Nicholas A. and James H. Fowler. (2011). Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. 

[9] Pariser, Eli. (2011/2012). The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You.

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