#FactCheck-AI-Generated Video Falsely Shared as Venezuela Earthquake Footage

A news graphic bearing the Navbharat Times logo is being widely circulated on social media. The graphic claims that religious preacher Devkinandan Thakur made an extremely offensive and casteist remark targeting the ‘Shudra’ community. Social media users are sharing the graphic and claiming that the statement was actually made by Devkinandan Thakur. Cyber Peace Foundation’s research and verification found that the claim being shared online is misleading. Our research found that the viral news graphic is completely fake and that Devkinandan Thakur did not make any such casteist statement.

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Claim

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A viral news graphic claims that Devkinandan Thakur made a derogatory and caste-based statement about Shudras.On 17 January 2026, an Instagram user shared the viral graphic with the caption, “This is probably the formula of Ram Rajya.”The text on the graphic reads: “People of Shudra castes reproduce through sexual intercourse, whereas Brahmins give birth to children after marriage through the power of their mantras, without intercourse.” The graphic also carries Devkinandan Thakur’s photograph and identifies him as a ‘Kathavachak’ (religious storyteller).

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• https://www.instagram.com/p/DTnT3twk8nF/ 
• https://archive.is/ZGq81 

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Fact Check:

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To verify the claim, we first searched for relevant keywords on Google. However, no credible or verified media reports were found supporting the claim. In the next stage of verification, we found a post published by NBT Hindi News (Navbharat Times) on X (formerly Twitter) on 17 January 2026, in which the organisation explicitly debunked the viral graphic. Navbharat Times clarified that the graphic circulating online was fake and also shared the original and authentic post related to the news.

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• https://x.com/NavbharatTimes/status/2012386017228304891?s=20 

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Further research led us to Devkinandan Thakur’s official Facebook account, where he posted a clarification on 17 January 2026. In his post, he stated that anti-social elements are creating fake ‘Sanatani’ profiles and spreading false news, misusing the names of reputed media houses and platforms to mislead and divide people. He described the viral content as part of a deliberate conspiracy and fake agenda aimed at weakening unity. He also warned that AI-generated fake videos and fabricated statements are increasingly being used to create confusion, mistrust and division.

Devkinandan Thakur urged people not to believe or share any post, news or video without verification, and advised checking information through official websites, verified social media accounts or trusted sources.

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• https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1459724608843017&set=pcb.1459676438847834 

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Conclusion

The viral news graphic attributing a casteist statement to Devkinandan Thakur is completely fake.Devkinandan Thakur did not make the alleged remark, and the graphic circulating with the Navbharat Times logo is fabricated.

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Introduction

The 2025 Delhi Legislative Assembly election is just around the corner, scheduled for February 5, 2025, with all 70 constituencies heading to the polls. The eagerly awaited results will be announced on February 8, bringing excitement as the people of Delhi prepare to see their chosen leader take the helm as Chief Minister. As the election season unfolds, social media becomes a buzzing hub of activity, with information spreading rapidly across platforms. However, this period also sees a surge in online mis/disinformation, making elections a hotspot for misleading content. It is crucial for citizens to exercise caution and remain vigilant against false or deceptive online posts, videos, or content. Empowering voters to distinguish facts from fiction and recognize the warning signs of misinformation is essential to ensure informed decision-making. By staying alert and well-informed, we can collectively safeguard the integrity of the democratic process.

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Risks of Mis/Disinformation

According to the 2024 survey report titled ‘Truth Be Told’ by ‘The 23 Watts’, 90% of Delhi’s youth (Gen Z) report witnessing a spike in fake news during elections, and 91% believe it influences voting patterns. Furthermore, the research highlights that 14% of Delhi’s youth tend to share sensational news without fact-checking, relying solely on conjecture.

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Recent Measures by ECI

Recently the Election Commission of India (EC) has issued a fresh advisory to political parties to ensure responsible use of AI-generated content in their campaigns. The EC has issued guidelines to curb the potential use of "deepfakes" and AI-generated distorted content by political parties and their representatives to disturb the level playing field. EC has mandated the labelling of all AI-generated content used in election campaigns to enhance transparency, combat misinformation, ensuring a fair electoral process in the face of rapidly advancing AI technologies.

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Best Practices to Avoid Electoral Mis/Disinformation 

• Seek Information from Official Sources: Voters should rely on authenticated sources for information. These include reading official manifestos, following verified advisory notifications from the Election Commission, and avoiding unverified claims or rumours.
• Consume News Responsibly: Voters must familiarize themselves with dependable news channels and make use of reputable fact-checking organizations that uphold the integrity of news content. It is crucial to refrain from randomly sharing or forwarding any news post, video, or message without verifying its authenticity. Consume responsibly, fact-check thoroughly, and share cautiously.
• Role of Fact-Checking: Cross-checking and verifying information from credible sources are indispensable practices. Reliable and trustworthy fact-checking tools are vital for assessing the authenticity of information in the digital space. Voters are encouraged to use these tools to validate information from authenticated sources and adopt a habit of verification on their own. This approach fosters a culture of critical thinking, empowering citizens to counter deceptive deepfakes and malicious misinformation effectively. It also helps create a more informed and resilient electorate.
• Be Aware of Electoral Deepfakes: In the era of artificial intelligence, synthetic media presents significant challenges. Just as videos can be manipulated, voices can also be cloned. It is essential to remain vigilant against the misuse of deepfake audio and video content by malicious actors. Recognize the warning signs, such as inconsistencies or unnatural details, and stay alert to misleading multimedia content. Proactively question and verify such material to avoid falling prey to deception.

References

1. https://www.financialexpress.com/business/brandwagon-90-ofnbsp-delhi-youth-witness-spike-in-fake-news-during-elections-91-believe-it-influences-voting-patterns-revealed-the-23-watts-report-3483166/
2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/election-commission-urges-parties-to-disclose-ai-generated-campaign-content-in-interest-of-transparency/articleshow/117306865.cms
3. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/election-commission-issues-advisory-on-use-of-ai-in-poll-campaigning/article69103888.ece
4. https://indiaai.gov.in/article/election-commission-of-india-embraces-ai-ethics-in-campaigning-advisory-on-labelling-ai-generated-content

Introduction

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Picture this - you wake up one morning, check your phone, and discover that a fraudster has emptied your bank account overnight. Your first instinct is to call someone, anyone, who can stop the money from vanishing for good. For millions of Indians today, that number is 1930, the national cybercrime helpline. At a high-level review meeting in June 2026, Union Home Minister Amit Shah directed that the helpline undergo a comprehensive revamp, one that brings in artificial intelligence, multilingual support, and a stronger framework for resolving victim grievances. This is not a minor patch. It is a signal that India wants to treat cybercrime response as a serious governance priority rather than an administrative checkbox.

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The Evolution of 1930: From a Pilot Number to National Infrastructure

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The helpline’s origin lies in 155260 (Old helpline no.), launched in 2020 by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) with the Reserve Bank of India and the banking sector, built specifically to intercept financial fraud before funds could be laundered across accounts. In 2021, it was renamed 1930 to make the number easier for citizens to recall under stress, a small but telling decision: a security architecture only works if people can remember it during a crisis. It was paired with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, launched in August 2019 to strengthen reporting and response mechanisms nationwide, which was later expanded to cover all categories of cybercrime after starting out limited to content-related offences. Over five years, state police forces extended 1930 into round-the-clock, multi-line operations and linked it to local cyber cells, turning a central scheme into genuinely federated infrastructure. The numbers now justify that investment: more than ₹7,000 crore has been saved nationally through the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System, while Mumbai alone blocked or recovered nearly ₹202 crore for victims in 2025 through the helpline. What began as a pilot number has become a core node in India’s financial security architecture.

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AI and Multilingual Support as a Citizen-Centric Governance Shift

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What makes Shah’s directive significant is not the technology itself but the design philosophy it embeds. The instruction to integrate AI and multilingual support is explicitly aimed at removing language barriers and enabling faster, more efficient complaint registration across the country. For a country with no single dominant spoken language, this is not a feature addition; it is a recognition that uniform, English-or-Hindi-first service design has been quietly excluding the citizens most vulnerable to fraud. Multilingual access addresses a long-standing gap by allowing citizens from non-Hindi-speaking states to report cybercrime in their own languages, significantly broadening reach. This marks a shift away from treating digital governance as a one-size-fits-all portal and toward treating it as a service obligation that adapts to the citizen rather than the reverse, a principle with implications well beyond cybercrime reporting.

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Routing, Tracking and Escalation: Engineering Accountability into Redressal

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The proposed reforms move beyond the front-end call experience into the architecture of follow-through. AI integration is expected to improve call routing, enable faster identification of fraud patterns, and assist real-time coordination between central and state law enforcement agencies. This matters because cyber fraud is intrinsically cross-jurisdictional: a victim in one state is often defrauded through an account opened in another. Shah directed central agencies to work closely with state governments to ensure that every call received on the helpline is followed through to its logical conclusion — language that, in policy terms, is an attempt to convert a complaint-registration system into a complaint-resolution system. Intelligent routing and case tracking, if implemented well, replace ad hoc coordination between states with a traceable escalation mechanism, the missing link that has historically allowed cases to stall after the first call was logged.

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Frozen Accounts and the Procedural Burden on Victims

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No part of the revamp is more consequential for ordinary victims than the directive on bank account freezes. The problem is compounded when a cybercrime complaint is registered in one state while the frozen account sits in another, leaving legitimate account holders, sometimes innocent third parties, locked out of their own funds for weeks. Shah directed that grievances arising from the freezing of bank accounts linked to financial frauds be addressed promptly, an instruction that responds directly to a problem now before the courts Judicial scrutiny on this exact question is intensifying: the Karnataka High Court recently held that banks cannot freeze an account completely when investigating agencies have directed only a partial freeze limited to a specified amount. A national, technology-backed mechanism for resolving such freezes would convert a recurring source of citizen grievance into a procedural safeguard, addressing one of the most cited failures of the existing system.

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Reading the Reforms Within India’s Broader Cyber Resilience Strategy

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Positioned within India’s wider digital governance trajectory, the 1930 revamp fits a recognisable pattern: build foundational infrastructure first, then layer intelligence and personalisation onto it once adoption is proven. The same logic shaped Aadhaar, UPI and the Digital India programme more broadly. India has seen a sharp rise in digital financial fraud, investment scams, sextortion and phishing attacks in recent years, and the Ministry of Home Affairs’ response, expanding I4C, building specialised cybercrime units, and now investing in AI-led citizen interfaces, signals that cyber resilience is being treated less as a law-enforcement afterthought and more as a core pillar of financial-system integrity, alongside RBI and NPCI-led safeguards.

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Will These Reforms Strengthen Trust?

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The credibility of any reform lies in implementation, not announcement. Public commentary on the revamp captures this tension well: citizens have welcomed the intent while noting that earlier promises of coordination did not always translate into resolved cases, and that awareness gaps in rural India persist regardless of how sophisticated the backend becomes The 1930 revamp will be judged not by how quickly complaints are registered, an area where India already performs reasonably, but by how reliably they are closed. If AI-driven routing and a genuine national escalation mechanism reduce the gap between complaint and resolution, particularly on account freezes, the reform will have done more for citizen trust than any awareness campaign could. If implementation falters at the state-bank coordination layer, the technology will simply make an old problem move faster without making it smaller.

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Conclusion

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The story of 1930 is the story of Indian digital governance maturing in real time: from a hastily assembled fraud helpline to a piece of national financial security infrastructure now being re-engineered for scale, language diversity and accountability. Amit Shah’s directive should be read not as a single announcement but as an acknowledgment that citizen-facing systems must keep pace with the sophistication of the threats they are built to counter. Whether this becomes a genuine trust-building reform or another well-intentioned upgrade depends entirely on what happens after the press statement — in LEA’s call centres, bank back-offices and state coordination desks across the country.

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References

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1. https://www.republicworld.com/india/amit-shah-orders-major-overhaul-of-national-cybercrime-helpline-1930-calls-for-ai-upgrade-2026-06-17-128739
2.  https://the420.in/amit-shah-national-cybercrime-helpline-revamp/
3. https://inc42.com/buzz/home-minister-amit-shah-calls-for-ai-led-revamp-of-national-cybercrime-helpline/
4. https://thenewsmill.com/2026/06/amit-shah-directs-ai-upgrade-for-national-cybercrime-helpline-1930/
5. https://risingkashmir.com/national/amit-shah-reviews-national-cybercrime-helpline-1930-calls-for-ai-upgrade-12048424
6. https://www.newkerala.com/news/a/amit-shah-reviews-national-cybercrime-helpline-1930-calls-929.htm
7.  https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_(Indian_Cybercrime_Helpline)
8. https://www.newsonair.gov.in/over-rs-7000-crore-saved-through-citizen-financial-cyber-fraud-reporting-and-management-system
9. https://the420.in/mumbai-1930-cyber-helpline-saves-202-crore-2025

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