#FactCheck-Edited audio falsely claims PM Modi disrespected national anthem
Executive Summary
A video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being shared on social media with the claim that he disrespected the national anthem by continuing to walk while it was being played. The CyberPeace Research Wing’s investigation found that the claim is false. The audio heard in the viral clip has been added separately to the original footage, creating a misleading impression about what was happening in the video.
Claim
An X user shared the video claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi continued walking during the national anthem, thereby disrespecting it.
https://x.com/sudhirkummar123/status/2089044275665535414?s=20
Fact Check
To verify the claim, the Desk conducted a reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video. The search led us to a longer version of the footage uploaded on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official YouTube channel on June 21, 2025. We reviewed the longer video and found that the audio in the viral clip does not match the original footage. The original video does not feature the national anthem being played. Instead, a female announcer on the stage can be heard asking the gathering to welcome Prime Minister Modi upon his arrival in Siwan, Bihar. The description accompanying the original video also states that people gave Prime Minister Modi a warm welcome upon his arrival in Siwan.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YhBryZZwlIk
The investigation also found several media reports published on June 20, 2025, which reported that Modi had visited Siwan ahead of the Bihar Assembly elections and inaugurated or laid the foundation stones for development projects worth around Rs 5,900 crore. News18 report on PM Modi’s Siwan visit
The original footage therefore establishes that the scene was related to Modi’s welcome in Siwan and not to the playing of the national anthem.
Conclusion
The claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi disrespected the national anthem by walking during its rendition is false. The original footage does not contain the national anthem. The audio heard in the viral clip has been added separately to the video, creating a false impression about the incident.
Related Blogs
A video circulating widely on social media claims to show snowfall near Ambience Mall in Gurugram, Haryana. The clip is being shared alongside assertions that Gurugram witnessed snowfall for the first time in its history amid a severe cold wave in January 2026. However, an research by Cyber Peace Foundation has found the claim to be misleading. Our verification reveals that the viral video is not recent and has been available online since March 2023.
The Claim
On 14 January 2026, a Facebook user shared the video with the caption,“Something truly unbelievable happened today — Gurgaon witnessed snowfall for the first time in its history!”Through this post, the user implied that the visuals showed snowfall near Ambience Mall during the ongoing cold wave.link and screeshot
- https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTfS9X9DyBo/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_rid=239ddaf7-ec53-4b1d-8f3b-a5e39540b3ee
- https://archive.ph/JVjHf
Fact Check:
To verify the claim, we conducted a detailed search using relevant keywords but found no credible media reports or official statements to support it. Although Gurugram’s temperature dropped to 0.6 degrees Celsius amid an IMD-issued cold wave warning, there is no evidence to suggest that the city experienced snowfall or hail. As of January 16, 2026, weather records and official sources confirm that no such weather event occurred in Gurugram.
A reverse image search of keyframes extracted from the viral clip traced the same footage to a video uploaded on the YouTube channel Crazy Tube on March 21, 2023. This establishes that the video has been in circulation for nearly three years. In the original upload, the person filming clearly mentions that the visuals were recorded near a toll plaza, further indicating that the clip is unrelated to the recent weather conditions in Gurugram. Link and Screen Shot
We also came across an X (formerly Twitter) post from March 19, 2023, which featured images similar to those seen in the viral video. The post described the visuals as being from a hailstorm in Gurugram, indicating that the content predates the current weather conditions and is unrelated to the recent cold wave.
Conclusion:
The video is old and predates January 2026, and has been on the internet at least since March 2023. While Gurugram recorded a low of 0.6 degrees Celsius amid an IMD cold wave warning, the city did not experience snowfall or hail as of 16 January 2026. News reports from March 2023 confirm heavy rain and hail in Delhi and adjoining areas, including parts of Gurugram, but there is no evidence of snowfall in January 2026. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Introduction
Artificial intelligence is often hailed as a democratiser of knowledge, opportunity and skill. It is set to improve diagnostics, personalised learning, and productivity to boost the economy, which can assist millions of people to leave poverty. However, this may be an incomplete picture. A report of the United Nations Development Programme in 2025 tells a more complex tale. The Next Great Divergence: Why AI May Widen Inequality Between Countries cautions that, unless acts are taken to intervene, AI will not alleviate inequality between countries but will instead concentrate benefits in already advantaged economies and increase risks in more vulnerable ones.
Two Gaps, One Crisis
AI is not going to create a level playing field: it has been injected into a world where there is unprecedented inequality. The report outlines two structural asymmetries that will influence the ways in which its effects manifest: a capability gap and a vulnerability gap.
Those countries that have high connectivity, skills, compute and regulation will be in a position to reap a greater portion of the AI dividend. Others will be exposed to greater risks of job losses, information exclusion, misinformation, and the indirect consequences of increased energy and water demands.
The centre of this transition is the Asia-Pacific region, that harbors a population of more than 55 per cent of the world. More than half of the global AI users are now located in the region, but the initial positions are quite different. Nations such as Singapore and South Korea are already spending a lot of money on AI infrastructure, with others still striving to offer basic broadband services. Two out of three individuals already use AI tools in certain high-income economies. In most countries with low incomes, the utilisation is lower. Such figures are important as they depict not only a gap in technology but also a structural difference in terms of who controls AI and who is controlled by the latter.
When Inequality Becomes a Trust Problem
Any trusted technological system is based on three tenets: transparency, fairness and accountability. AI inequality negatively impacts all three.
If governments implement imported AI systems in areas with limited technical capability, with limited transparency on their operation, their construction, and their biases. Citizens do not really trust when decision-making systems are black boxes and domestic institutions lack the know-how to question them.
Data exclusion also interferes with fairness. The AI systems trained with the datasets not sufficiently representative of the rural population, linguistic minorities, and women will generate poorer results in those groups systematically. Since South Asian women are much less likely to own a smartphone, this impacts their representation in digital data, and consequently in any AI system trained on such data.
Safety Risks Are Not Evenly Distributed
The lack of trust has a direct safety aspect. For example, those countries that have less robust information ecosystems have a greater exposure to AI-generated misinformation that can bias the discourse of the populace, alter elections, and cause violence. They also have the weakest capability of screening, tagging, or combating such content.
The same can be said about labour markets. The very same technologies that can speed up marginalisation and destabilise governance increase human insecurity, especially among employees in the informal economy with weak social security. The UNDP report points out that the exposure of female employment to disruption by AI is disproportionate to that of male employment, which further presents a gendered dimension in an already unequal situation.
Risks of infrastructure are skewed as well. Large AI systems may create disproportionately high energy and water demands on countries that host the data infrastructure without there being an equivalent economic payback. The environmental cost is local while profits are outsourced. Dangers of AI spread downwards, and the advantages go upwards.
The Governance Gap and Regulatory Arbitrage
Governance is perhaps the most important aspect. There are only a few states that presently have extensive AI regulation systems. This gives rise to a patchy landscape, in which safety standards differ dramatically and where companies have an incentive to install systems in jurisdictions that have weaker regulation.
The main reason is the lack of capability, as expressed by Philip Schellekens, chief economist of the UNDP in Asia and the Pacific, who says that those countries that invest in skills, computing power and well-run governance structures will gain. The rest will be left far behind.
This departure has its ramifications outside the nations. When users in other areas are subjected to widely different rates of safety and equity by the same international platforms, the concept of uniform digital norms would no longer be sustainable. Confidence in AI systems is lost not only locally but also on a global scale.
Way Forward
The UNDP report makes it clear that there is no inevitability of divergence. To avert it, however, it is necessary to consider AI governance as a development, rather than a technology problem.
The capacity to govern should be constructed and not presumed. This implies assisting countries in establishing regulatory systems, institutional capacity, and facilitating cross-border collaboration on standards. It can also imply considering some AI features as a public good, with common models and open standards that do not allow a few firms or states to become too powerful.
The UNDP articulates the problem in a simple manner: in the end, the world's people and not machines must decide on what technologies should be given priority and how to utilise them optimally.
Conclusion
AI inequality is often framed as an economic divergence story. But its implications run deeper. It reshapes who is protected, who is visible in data, and who has the power to challenge harmful outcomes. The risk is not just that some countries fall behind economically. It is that the global digital ecosystem fragments into zones of high trust and low trust, high protection and low protection. The choices made now will determine which path prevails. AI can reinforce existing divides or help bridge them.
But that outcome will not be decided by the technology itself. It will be decided by how societies choose to distribute access, power, and responsibility in the systems they build.
References
- https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2025-12/undp-rbap-the-next-great-divergence_1.pdf
- https://www.undp.org/asia-pacific/press-releases/ai-risks-sparking-new-era-divergence-development-gaps-between-countries-widen-undp-report-finds
- https://www.undp.org/asia-pacific/blog/next-great-divergence-how-ai-could-split-world-again-if-we-dont-intervene
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/2/ai-threatens-to-widen-inequality-among-states-un
- https://www.undp.org/asia-pacific/next-great-divergence
- https://www.eco-business.com/press-releases/ai-risks-spark-new-era-of-divergence-as-development-gaps-widen-undp-report/
Executive Summary
A video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is being shared on social media with the claim that the Prime Minister touched the Iranian President’s feet and thanked him for providing gas, petrol and diesel to India at cheap prices. The post links the video to the 2026 BRICS Summit and claims that the two leaders had this conversation during the summit. CyberPeace Research Wing’s research found that the viral video is not authentic and is AI-generated.It is worth noting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian held a bilateral meeting on September 11, 2026, on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in New Delhi. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the two leaders discussed various aspects of bilateral relations, the situation in West Asia, the safety of maritime routes, and the need to ensure peace and stability in the region.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Modi thanked Iran for its regular and high-level participation in BRICS-related meetings. He also thanked President Pezeshkian for participating in the Leaders’ Session of the BRICS Business Forum. However, the official statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office makes no mention of Modi thanking the Iranian President for providing gas, petrol, diesel or oil at cheap prices.
Claim:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched the feet of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and thanked him for providing gas, oil, petrol and diesel to India at cheap prices.
https://x.com/1_Aurang/status/2099001779719749833
Fact Check:
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. However, we did not find any credible media report supporting the claim.As part of our research, we found a press release published on the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) website on September 11, 2026. The release provides details of the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. According to the press release, Prime Minister Modi thanked President Pezeshkian for Iran’s regular and high-level participation in BRICS-related meetings. He also thanked Pezeshkian for participating in the Leaders’ Session of the BRICS Business Forum.The two leaders also discussed bilateral relations and recent developments in West Asia. Prime Minister Modi reiterated India’s position that all issues should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy and stressed the need to ensure peace and stability in the region. However, the press release makes no mention of Prime Minister Modi thanking the Iranian President for providing gas, oil, petrol or diesel at cheap prices.
As part of our further research, we found the original photograph of the two leaders on the official X handle of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The photograph shows Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian shaking hands with each other.
https://x.com/PMOIndia/status/2098457126842851492?s=20
We then examined the video closely and noticed several visual inconsistencies. We subsequently scanned the video using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation. According to the results, the viral video has a 98% probability of being AI-generated.
We also scanned the video using another AI detection tool, Sightengine. According to the results, the viral video has a 99% probability of being AI-generated.
Conclusion
Our research found that the viral claim is false. The video claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s feet and thanked him for providing cheap gas, oil, petrol and diesel to India is AI-generated and does not show a genuine interaction between the two leaders. Our research found several visual inconsistencies in the video. The findings were further supported by AI detection tools, with Hive Moderation identifying a 98% probability of AI generation, while Sightengine indicated a 99% probability. Furthermore, the official information released by the Prime Minister’s Office regarding Modi’s meeting with Pezeshkian contains no reference to the Prime Minister thanking Iran for providing fuel at cheap prices. Therefore, the video is being circulated on social media with a false and misleading claim.
