#FactCheck: 2017 Delhi Road Rage Video Misleadingly Shared as Woman Slapping Soldier Over Harassment
Executive Summary
A video is being shared on social media with the claim that a woman in New Delhi slapped an Indian Army soldier who allegedly followed and harassed her on the road. The post claims that the woman confronted the soldier on the spot, linking the incident to harassment of women. CyberPeace Research found the viral claim to be misleading. Our research found that the video is not recent but dates back to an incident in Delhi in September 2017. The video is from a road rage incident that took place in the Vasant Kunj-Rajokari Flyover area of South Delhi in September 2017. According to available reports, the woman allegedly assaulted two Army personnel. The claim that the video shows an incident in which a woman slapped an Army soldier in response to being followed or harassed by him is misleading.
Claim:
A social media user shared the viral video claiming that a woman in New Delhi slapped an Indian Army soldier who allegedly followed and harassed her on the road. The post claimed that instead of remaining silent, the woman confronted the soldier on the spot. The post further stated that the incident sends a strong message that wearing a uniform does not give anyone the right to harass or intimidate civilians, especially women.
https://x.com/OfficialThoka/status/2101989813071307032
Fact Check
To verify the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. However, we did not find any credible media reports related to the claim.To further verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a reverse image search of the keyframes of the video. During the search, we found the same video on the NDTV website, which was published on September 15, 2017. According to the NDTV report, a woman in New Delhi was caught on camera repeatedly slapping an Army personnel. The soldier did not appear to retaliate during the incident. Following a complaint by the Army to the Delhi Police, the woman was arrested. However, she was released within a few hours after a judge granted her bail. The report stated that in a video recorded by a witness on a mobile phone in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj the previous Saturday, 44-year-old Smriti Kalra was seen repeatedly slapping the soldier on the face before walking angrily towards her car. The soldier appeared to be trying to reason with her while attempting to defend himself against the assault.Smriti Kalra, a resident of Gurgaon, had stopped her Tata Indica car in front of an Army truck carrying soldiers. At first glance, the incident appeared to be a case of road rage, although there was no reported collision or any obvious provocation for the attack.Smriti Kalra, who was divorced, was charged with causing hurt to deter a public servant from performing his duty. She was also accused of obstructing and assaulting a public servant on duty and wrongfully restraining him. Police seized her car.
In the next stage of our research, we found a report on the Aaj Tak website related to the incident, which also featured the viral video. The report included an exclusive interview with the Army personnel involved in the incident. He was identified as Mahavir Singh, who was serving as a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) in the Army at the time.
In an exclusive interview with Aaj Tak, Mahavir Singh said that he was deeply saddened by the incident. He questioned how anyone could behave in such a manner with Indian Army personnel, abuse them, or slap them. He said that the Army vehicle was moving slowly when a car suddenly came in front of it and started driving ahead of them. A woman was the only person in the car, and she was allegedly driving in a zigzag manner in front of the Army vehicle.
Conclusion
Our research found that the viral video is being shared with a misleading context. The video is not from a recent incident but from a road rage incident that took place in the Vasant Kunj-Rajokari Flyover area of South Delhi in September 2017. According to available media reports, the woman had allegedly misbehaved with Army personnel and slapped one of the soldiers during the incident. Mahavir Singh, who was serving as a JCO in the Army at the time, also spoke to the media about the incident. Our research found no credible information confirming that the Army personnel had followed or harassed the woman. Therefore, the claim that the video from the 2017 incident shows a woman slapping a soldier in response to being allegedly followed or harassed by him is misleading.
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Introduction
The most recent cable outages in the Red Sea, which caused traffic to slow down throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and even India, Pakistan and several parts of the UAE, like Etilasat and Du networks, also experienced comparable internet outages, serve as a reminder that the physical backbone of the internet is both routine and extremely important. Cloud platforms reroute traffic, e-commerce stalls, financial transactions stutter, and governments face the fragility of something they long believed to be seamless when systems like SMW4 and IMEWE malfunction close to Jeddah. Concerns over the susceptibility of undersea information highways have been raised by the incident. Given the ongoing conflict in the Red Sea region, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been waging a campaign against commercial shipping in retaliation for the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. The effects are seen immediately. The argument over whether global connection is genuinely robust or just operating on borrowed time was reignited by these recent failures, which compelled key providers to reroute flows.
A geopolitical signal is what looks like a “technical glitch.” Accidents in contested waters are rarely simply accidents, and the inability to quickly assign blame highlights how brittle this ostensibly flawless digital world is.
The Paradox of Essential yet Exposed Infrastructure
This is not an isolated accident. Undersea cables, which carry more than 97% of all internet traffic worldwide, connect continents at the speed of light, and support the cloud infrastructures that contemporary societies rely on, are the brains of the digital economy., as cautioned by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. In a sense, they are our unseen electrical grid; without them, connectivity breaks down. However, they continue to be incredibly fragile in spite of their significance. Anchors and fishing gear frequently damage cables, which are no thicker than a garden hose, and they break more than a hundred times annually on average. Most faults can be swiftly fixed or relocated, but when several cuts happen in strategic areas, like the 2022 Tonga eruption or the current Red Sea crisis, nations and economies are exposed to being isolated for days.
The geopolitical risks are far more urgent. Subsea cables traverse disputed waters, land in hostile regimes, and cross oceans without regard for political boundaries. This makes them appealing for espionage, where state actors can tap or alter flows covertly, as well as sabotage, when service is interrupted to prevent access. Deliberate cable strikes have been likened by NATO specialists to the destruction of bridges or highways: if you choke the arteries, you choke the economy. Ironically, the most susceptible locations are not far below the surface but rather where cables emerge. These landing sites, which handle billions of dollars’ worth of trade, can have less security than a conventional bank office.
The New Theatre of Geopolitics
Legal frameworks exist, but they are patchwork. Intentional damage is illegal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and previous agreements, but attribution is still infamously challenging. Covert sabotage and intelligence operations are examples of legal grey areas in hybrid warfare scenarios. Even during times of peace, national governments that rely on their continuous operation but find it difficult to extend sovereignty into international waters, private telecom consortia, and content giants like Google and Amazon that now finance their own cables share the burden of protection.
Cables convey influence in addition to data. Strategic leverage belongs to whoever can secure them, tap them or cut them during a fight. Even though landing stations are the entry points for billions of dollars’ worth of international trade, they frequently offer less security than a commercial bank branch.
India at the Crossroads of Digital Geopolitics
India’s reliance on underwater cables presents both advantages and disadvantages. India presents a classic single-point-of-failure danger, with more than 95% of its international data traffic being routed through a 6-km coastal stretch close to Versova, Mumbai. Red Sea disruptions have previously demonstrated how swiftly chokepoints located far from India’s coast may impede its digital arteries, placing a burden on government functions, defence communications, and financial flows. However, this same vulnerability also makes India a crucial player in the global discussion around digital sovereignty. It is not only an infrastructure exercise; it is also a strategic and constitutional necessity to be able to diversify landing places, expedite clearances, and develop indigenous repair capability.
India’s geographic location also presents opportunities. India’s location along East-West cable lines makes it an ideal location for robust connectivity as the Indo-Pacific region becomes the defining region of geopolitics in the twenty-first century. India may change from being a passive recipient of connectivity to a shaper of its governance by investing in distributed cable architecture and strengthening partnerships through initiatives like Quad and IPEF. Its aspirations for global influence must be balanced with its home regulatory lethargy. By doing this, India can secure not only bandwidth but also sovereignty itself by converting subsea cables from hidden liabilities into tools of economic might and geopolitical leverage.
CyberPeace Insights
If cables are considered essential infrastructure, then their safety demands the same level of attention that we give to ports, airports, and electrical grids. Stronger landing station defences, redundancy in route, and sincere public-private collaborations are now a necessity rather than an option.
The Red Sea incident is a call to action rather than a singular disruption. The robustness of underwater cables will determine whether the internet is a sustainable resource or a brittle luxury susceptible to the next outage as reliance on the cloud grows and 5G spreads.
References
- https://forumias.com/blog/answered-assess-the-strategic-significance-of-undersea-cable-networks-for-indias-digital-economy-and-national-security-discuss-the-vulnerabilities-of-this-infrastructure-and-suggest-measures-to-e/
- https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/red-sea-cable-cuts-disrupt-internet-across-asia-middle-east-2025-09-07/
- https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/what-can-we-learn-from-africas-multiple-submarine-cable-outages
Executive Summary
A video is being shared on social media with the claim that Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was seen eating nuts during the BRICS Summit. The post claims that a reporter questioned him about eating nuts during the event. The video is also being shared with the sarcastic caption, “The Nutty Spokesperson.” Through the post, an attempt is being made to suggest that a reporter questioned Randhir Jaiswal about eating nuts during a press briefing. CyberPeace Research found that in the original video, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was responding to a question about Pakistan’s announcement of a 7 million Pakistani rupee bounty on Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. Jaiswal addressed the announcement during the regular media briefing held on September 15, 2026. In his response, Jaiswal said that such announcements by Pakistan were not new and that the country should take concrete action against terrorism. However, the video being circulated on social media has been digitally edited using the original footage to falsely suggest that a reporter had questioned Jaiswal about eating nuts.
Claim:
During the BRICS Summit, a reporter questioned Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal about eating nuts and confronted him over it.
https://x.com/PhophoOnDutyy/status/2099940769876640084?s=20
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. During the search, we did not find any credible media report supporting the claim.As part of our research, we conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the video. We found the original video on the YouTube channel of the Ministry of External Affairs, India. In the original video, Randhir Jaiswal was responding to a question about Pakistan’s announcement of a 7 million Pakistani rupee bounty on Masood Azhar.The reporter does not question Jaiswal about eating nuts anywhere in the original video. This establishes that the original footage has been edited and presented with a false context. Therefore, the claim being circulated on social media is false.
https://www.youtube.com/live/dw-qqLolRgc
As part of our further research, we checked the official X account of MEA FactCheck. It also identified the video as AI-generated.
https://x.com/MEAFactCheck/status/2100076244805255501?s=20
The video was scanned using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation. According to the results, the video has a 55% probability of being AI-generated.
Conclusion
Our research found that the video being shared on social media is fake and edited. In the original video, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was responding to a question about Pakistan’s announcement of a 7 million Pakistani rupee bounty on Masood Azhar.At no point in the original video does the reporter question Jaiswal about eating nuts.
The footage being circulated has been digitally manipulated and presented in a different context. The official X account of MEA FactCheck also identified the video as AI-generated. Therefore, the claim that Jaiswal was questioned by a reporter about eating nuts is false and misleading.
Executive Summary
A news video is being widely circulated on social media with the claim that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has resigned from his post in protest against the ongoing UGC-related controversy. Several users are sharing the clip while alleging that Kumar stepped down after opposing the issue. However, CyberPeace research has found the claim to be false. The researchrevealed that the video being shared is from 2022 and has no connection whatsoever with the UGC or any recent protests related to it. An old video has been misleadingly linked to a current issue to spread misinformation on social media.
Claim:
An Instagram user shared a video on January 26 claiming that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had resigned. The post further alleged that the news was first aired on Republic channel and that Kumar had submitted his resignation to then-Governor Phagu Chauhan. The link to the post, its archived version, and screenshots can be seen below. (Links as provided)
Fact Check:
To verify the claim, CyberPeace first conducted a keyword-based search on Google. No credible or established media organisation reported any such resignation, clearly indicating that the viral claim lacked authenticity.
Further, the voiceover in the viral video states that Nitish Kumar handed over his resignation to Governor Phagu Chauhan. However, Phagu Chauhan ceased to be the Governor of Bihar in February 2023. The current Governor of Bihar is Arif Mohammad Khan, making the claim in the video factually incorrect and misleading.
In the next step, keyframes from the viral video were extracted and reverse-searched using Google Lens. This led to the official YouTube channel of Republic Bharat, where the full version of the same video was found. The video was uploaded on August 9, 2022. This clearly establishes that the clip circulating on social media is not recent and is being shared out of context.
Conclusion
CyberPeace’s research confirms that the viral video claiming Nitish Kumar resigned over the UGC issue is false. The video dates back to 2022 and has no link to the current UGC controversy. An old political video has been deliberately circulated with a misleading narrative to create confusion on social media.
