#FactCheck: Old Video of Priest Being Assaulted Misleadingly Shared With False Harassment Claim
Executive Summary
A video showing a man being beaten with a cricket bat is being widely shared on social media. It is being claimed that a priest had allegedly misbehaved with a girl at the same house where he had gone to perform a puja, following which the girl’s brother beat him up. However, our Research found the claim to be misleading. CyberPeace Research found that the video is around four years old. According to reports, the man was beaten after he allegedly objected to a cricket bat being kept inside a temple. Four youths were arrested by the police in connection with the incident.
Claim:
An X user shared the viral video with the caption: “The priest went to a house to perform a puja, where he first harassed a girl, and then the girl’s brother played T20. The sensible girl informed her family. The priest who predicts other people’s future could not predict his own—that his honour was also going to be at stake.”
https://x.com/vineel_ydv/status/1837299886921753054?s=20
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/b91vB
Fact Check
To verify the viral claim, we searched Google using relevant keywords. During the search, we did not find any credible media reports supporting the claim. To further verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the video. During the search, we found a report published by Dainik Bhaskar on November 5, 2020. According to the report, police arrested four youths in connection with the assault of a priest in Fatehabad, Haryana. The report stated that three days earlier, the youths had beaten the priest with a cricket bat after he objected to them keeping the bat inside the temple.
https://www.bhaskar.com/local/haryana/news/fatehabad-haryana-priest-beaten-with-cricket-bat-very-hardly-in-fatehabad-police-arrested-four-accused-127888122.html
As part of the next step in our Research, we found a report published on the News18 website with a generic caption. The viral image was also included in the report.
Conclusion
Our Research found that the video is around four years old and is unrelated to the claim being circulated on social media. The incident took place after the priest objected to the youths keeping a cricket bat inside the temple, following which he was assaulted with the bat. Police subsequently arrested four youths in connection with the incident. Therefore, the claim that the priest was beaten after allegedly harassing a girl at the house where he had gone to perform a puja is misleading.
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Introduction
Search engines have become indispensable in our daily lives, allowing us to find information instantly by entering keywords or phrases. Using the prompt "search Google or type a URL" reflects just how seamless this journey to knowledge has become. With millions of searches conducted every second, and Google handling over 6.3 million searches per minute as of 2023 (Statista), one critical question arises: do search engines prioritise results based on user preferences and past behaviours, or are they truly unbiased?
Understanding AI Bias in Search Algorithms
AI bias is also known as machine learning bias or algorithm bias. It refers to the occurrence of biased results due to human biases that deviate from the original training data or AI algorithm which leads to distortion of outputs and creation of potentially harmful outcomes. The sources of this bias are algorithmic bias, data bias and interpretation bias which emerge from user history, geographical data, and even broader societal biases in training data.
Common biases include excluding certain groups of people from opportunities because of AI bias. In healthcare, underrepresenting data of women or minority groups can skew predictive AI algorithms. While AI helps streamline the automation of resume scanning during a search to help identify ideal candidates, the information requested and answers screened out can result in biased outcomes due to a biased dataset or any other bias in the input data.
Case in Point: Google’s "Helpful" Results and Its Impact
Google optimises results by analysing user interactions to determine satisfaction with specific types of content. This data-driven approach forms ‘filter bubbles’ by repeatedly displaying content that aligns with a user’s preferences, regardless of factual accuracy. While this can create a more personalised experience, it risks confining users to a limited view, excluding diverse perspectives or alternative viewpoints.
The personal and societal impacts of such biases are significant. At an individual level, filter bubbles can influence decision-making, perceptions, and even mental health. On a societal level, these biases can reinforce stereotypes, polarise opinions, and shape collective narratives. There is also a growing concern that these biases may promote misinformation or limit users’ exposure to diverse perspectives, all stemming from the inherent bias in search algorithms.
Policy Challenges and Regulatory Measures
Regulating emerging technologies like AI, especially in search engine algorithms, presents significant challenges due to their intricate, proprietary nature. Traditional regulatory frameworks struggle to keep up with them as existing laws were not designed to address the nuances of algorithm-driven platforms. Regulatory bodies are pushing for transparency and accountability in AI-powered search algorithms to counter biases and ensure fairness globally. For example, the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act aims to establish a regulatory framework that will categorise AI systems based on risk and enforces strict standards for transparency, accountability, and fairness, especially for high-risk AI applications, which may include search engines. India has proposed the Digital India Act in 2023 which will define and regulate High-risk AI.
Efforts include ethical guidelines emphasising fairness, accountability, and transparency in information prioritisation. However, a complex regulatory landscape could hinder market entrants, highlighting the need for adaptable, balanced frameworks that protect user interests without stifling innovation.
CyberPeace Insights
In a world where search engines are gateways to knowledge, ensuring unbiased, accurate, and diverse information access is crucial. True objectivity remains elusive as AI-driven algorithms tend to personalise results based on user preferences and past behaviour, often creating a biased view of the web. Filter bubbles, which reinforce individual perspectives, can obscure factual accuracy and limit exposure to diverse viewpoints. Addressing this bias requires efforts from both users and companies. Users should diversify sources and verify information, while companies should enhance transparency and regularly audit algorithms for biases. Together, these actions can promote a more equitable, accurate, and unbiased search experience for all users.
References
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241101-how-online-photos-and-videos-alter-the-way-you-think
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241031-how-google-tells-you-what-you-want-to-hear
- https://www.ibm.com/topics/ai-bias#:~:text=In%20healthcare%2C%20underrepresenting%20data%20of,can%20skew%20predictive%20AI%20algorithms
Executive Summary
A photo allegedly showing injuries to Seema Haider has been widely circulated on social media. Users are claiming that her husband Sachin Meena assaulted her. However, a fact-check by CyberPeace Research Wing has found the claim to be false. The research reveals that the viral image is AI-generated and is being shared with a misleading narrative.
Claim
On X (formerly Twitter), a user shared the image on May 14, 2026, claiming that Sachin Meena assaulted Seema Haider.
Fact Check
A keyword-based search on Google did not return any credible media reports supporting the viral claim.
A closer visual examination of the image raised suspicions of AI generation. The image was first analysed using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated a 99% probability that the image is AI-generated.
Further analysis using another AI detection tool, Sightengine, also produced similar results, confirming a 99% likelihood that the image was generated using AI tools.
Conclusion
The viral image is AI-generated and misleading. The claim that Sachin Meena assaulted Seema Haider is false and has no factual basis.
Introduction
In June 2026, the Government of India temporarily restricted access to Telegram amid concerns that the platform had been used to facilitate examination related malpractice, including the alleged circulation of leaked question papers during the NEET UG re examination. The move reignited a familiar debate about the responsibility of digital platforms for unlawful activities carried out through them.
Critics of such restrictions raise a fundamental question: if a traffic accident occurs on a road, do we shut down the road? If theft takes place inside a shopping mall, do we close the entire mall? By the same logic, is it reasonable to block a communication platform because some individuals misuse it? These questions lie at the heart of a broader conflict between state interests in maintaining public order and the protection of digital rights, privacy, and freedom of communication in an increasingly interconnected world.
The controversy surrounding Telegram therefore extends beyond a single examination or messaging application. It raises a deeper and more pressing question: who should bear responsibility for illegal acts committed through encrypted digital platforms, and where should the law draw the line between effective enforcement and the preservation of fundamental digital freedoms?
Beyond mere communication for millions of students in India, Telegram is a classroom in the digital sense, an archive for their notes, practice papers, lecture recordings, and community groups that hundreds of millions of candidates refer to every single day. Therefore, why on a routine day in June 2026 did the messaging app top every other channel? Temporary internet restriction on the platform had become necessary to stop examination-related malpractice like leakage of question papers and was temporarily suspended, with reports suggesting that this move by the government was on the occasion of the NEET-UG re-examination.
This ban once again brings up a bigger question that cannot be contained within one particular examination. When has it become okay to hold a communication platform responsible and accountable for illegal acts committed over it? Or are the perpetrators solely to blame, and the service can be prohibited? Ultimately, where is the line drawn between public interest, law enforcement, and digital rights and privacy?
End-to-End Encryption: Architecture and Benefits
At the heart of these discussions of Telegram and other apps lies a technology referred to as "end-to-end encryption" or "E2EE." Quite literally, it means a message is locked with cryptography on the sender's device and can only be unlocked by the intended recipient. Not even the tech platform running the communication app can decipher it for everyone else; it just looks like random gibberish.
The Process
This kind of modern communication relies on public key cryptography. Each person has a public key they can share with anyone and a private key that stays only on their devices. When they send you a message, it is scrambled with crypto that can be unlocked by only your private key. WhatsApp and Signal, for example, use the Signal Protocol, which features "perfect forward secrecy" and is designed to protect communications from ever being unlocked even if one key is compromised. Telegram's approach is a bit unique. By default, Telegram messages aren't encrypted with end-to-end crypto; this only comes via an optional feature called "Secret Chats," a key difference in the regulatory debate.
The Dark Side: Crime, Misuse, and the Moderation Dilemma
The very features that make end-to-end messaging popular among everyday people are privacy, speed, anonymity, and mass reach which also make end-to-end messaging popular among criminals. That, unfortunately, is the catch for policymakers globally: The technology designed to protect innocent users is also the technology that facilitates criminal activity.
3.1 Criminal Abuse
Telegram, in particular, has frequently come under fire for its role in hosting a spectrum of criminal activities, most notably in the recent controversy in India regarding NEET-UG 2026 examination papers where channels allegedly advertised leaked question papers for enormous sums, convincing desperate candidates. In these instances, messages could be altered or deleted using Telegram’s message editing feature, fabricating evidence of prior leaks. However, this extends to illicit marketplaces, drug trafficking, financial fraud, money laundering, and distributing other prohibited content. Telegram's usage in disseminating extremist propaganda and aiding criminal organizations is also frequently cited, leading to bans or restrictions in countries ranging from Brazil to Nepal to Somalia to Vietnam.
3.2 The Moderation Dilemma
But the difficulty is not just with misuse; it’s also about effective moderation. Moderation, however, requires content transparency. Strong encryption is built to obscure just that. Many end-to-end messaging services like Signal and WhatsApp emphasize that even if they wanted to, they would have been able to decipher the content of a user’s message due to their architecture. Telegram has been in scrutiny for years due to its limited cooperation with law enforcement agencies because its default chats are not completely end-to-end encrypted, though there has been an attempt by Pavel Durov, the platform’s founder, to increase cooperation following his 2024 arrest in France.
This gives policymakers the following challenge: How can governments require increased access to fight crime without forcing tech companies to weaken security for everyone? As cryptographers point out, a specific "backdoor" intended to allow access to law enforcement officials can be easily exploited by hackers, foreign governments, and any other actor with nefarious intent.
Comparison of Regulatory Approaches Worldwide
4.1 Authoritarian Countries' Responses
China, for instance, has had the app blocked as part of its strategy to control access to the internet since 2015, and Iran did so in 2018 when the app was used to help organize protests against the government. An infamous Russian bid to block Telegram in 2018 turned into a cautionary story. Trying to censor the service disrupted the IPs of millions of computers, including significant services like those run by Amazon and Google. The move was met by a surge of users turning to VPNs to get access. It’s an expensive, disruptive, and incomplete form of censorship.
4.2 Democratic Countries' Approaches
Democratic jurisdictions generally prefer targeted interventions. Telegram was suspended in Brazil in 2022 and 2023, though again, only in response to a judge’s order in relation to particular investigations, and was lifted when it came into compliance. The EU’s approach has been to build on an established approach of regulation by use of a broader legislative framework, including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, aimed at platform liability rather than outlawing encryption outright.
Meanwhile, the proposed scanning of encrypted communications has run into strong judicial headwinds, with the European courts stressing the danger of backdoors to privacy.
4.3 The United Kingdom Approach
The UK offers a middle way. With its Investigatory Powers Act, the government can oblige tech companies to collaborate in legitimate investigations. But this came to a head earlier this year with the case of Apple and the government's attempts to force it to unlock encrypted iCloud backups. Apple not only refused to reduce its encryption but also decided instead to disable some of its features for British users. This has created a problem for democracies across the world: how to balance access for investigators against the need to maintain the security that makes our systems safer.
Judicial and Legislative Perspectives: India and Beyond
In the Indian context, to have a perspective about the legal frameworks concerning content moderation, let’s explore some of the foundational decisions from the Supreme Court. Three decisions have laid the building block for digital rights laws: the first being Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015), where Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, was upheld, but only by laying rigorous conditions on the review process and chance of challenging the said decision. Another important decision in this sphere is Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) which stated that the right to privacy is fundamental in nature under Article 21 of the Constitution and stipulated the constitutional requirements of legality, legitimacy, and proportionality against the state’s interventions in fundamental rights. The most recent important case law to consider, in this context, would be Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) which set certain limitations, such as any internet shut-downs or orders have to be temporary, proportional, and have scope for appeal. Further, the Supreme Court demanded transparency around any and all orders of blocking.
These principles of proportionality and legal limitations are highly pertinent to the Telegram issue, especially since Section 69A confers powers to block information in case of concerns about public order, national security, etc., but activists often cite this power to target specific content rather than entire platforms like Telegram. The ban on Telegram in June 2026 and disabling of message editing will force authorities to justify not only their statutory authority but also the need for proportionate means.
These aspects are amplified by IT Rules, 2021, which mandate that some instant messaging platforms may require identification of the ‘first originator’ of messages, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, to protect digital personal data by ensuring it does not undermine national security exceptions to this end.
Moreover, the use of encryption to ensure secure and private communications is becoming an important point of legal discourse globally. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights in Podchasov v. Russia (2024) held that mandating decryption on devices as a tool of investigative power constituted a disproportionate interference with an individual's right to privacy implying that while states may indeed have authority to regulate communication and digital services, any such measures limiting the scope of encryption will have to meet strict requirements of legality, necessity, and proportionality to be legally justifiable.
Constitutional Validity of the Ban
The government's case for a constitutional ban on Telegram rests upon its ability to satisfy the proportionality framework established by Puttaswamy and Anuradha Bhasin.
- Legitimate aim: The state's strong suit. This is the government's best argument. Protection of the integrity of NEET-UG, a high-stakes test with close to 2.4 million students, can indeed be a legitimate state objective. Given that there is evidence of channels that allegedly were involved in selling leaked question papers, the action is presumably justifiable under section 69A for preventing the incitement or occurrence of public disorder or preventing cognizable offenses.
- Necessity: The National Testing Agency (NTA) itself admitted that localized removal of suspicious accounts on Telegram had already mitigated the risks, while Telegram insisted that it had independently taken down numerous channels. The fact that the block affected more than 150 million users in India, where the medium is widely used for personal communication and is also utilized on other platforms like WhatsApp, Discord, and Instagram to a similar or higher extent, raises the responsibility to justify a strict platform-wide ban. Moreover, there is a significant legal question regarding the state’s authority under section 69A to direct Telegram to disable its message-editing capability.
- Proportionality and process: The block, even though it was temporary and intended to ensure fairness in the examination system, severely undermined legitimate uses of the platform by students who used it to share educational materials and organize study groups. Moreover, the opaqueness around the section 69A order is itself hard to reconcile with the transparency requirements set out in Anuradha Bhasin.
Thus, while the objectives of preventing exam fraud may be legitimate, the necessity and proportionality of single platform-wide bans remain highly suspect under Indian constitutional law.
Policy Recommendations and the Path Forward
The Telegram controversy points to the need for a better balancing act in platform governance in India. Firstly, instead of blanket platform shutdowns, action should target specific channels, bots, or URLs, as may be the case. Secondly, any attempt to dictate changes to features, such as disabling message editing, should be based on specific statutory provisions, not an expansive reading of Section 69A. Furthermore, there is a dire need for increased transparency; blocking orders must state the justification for the order, what is being blocked, and for how long, as far as possible. In the long run, stricter cross-border cooperation via streamlined MLATs, or through the appointment of local legal representatives by foreign platforms, would facilitate easier enforcement. Ultimately, all major blocking decisions must be accompanied by proportionality assessments. Lastly, India must resist pressure to provide access to encryption backdoors; while this might ease investigative burdens, doing so would severely jeopardise the cybersecurity of India, its businesses, and citizens.
Conclusion
The Telegram ban is an example of the tricky equilibrium between protection of public interest and protection of digital liberties in our hyper-connected world. While the intent to counter exam fraud is justifiable, a blanket ban on any platform has much broader implications on questions of necessity, proportionality and transparency. India has a well-developed constitutional and legal framework to deal with this issue already, and the challenge will be to see if those powers are used appropriately.
References
Cases:
- Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) 5 SCC 1 — Supreme Court of India
- Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) 10 SCC 1 — Supreme Court of India (Nine-Judge Bench)
- Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) 3 SCC 637 — Supreme Court of India
- Podchasov v. Russia, European Court of Human Rights (Application No. 33696/19, February 2024)
- Apple Inc. v. United States (In re Search of an Apple iPhone, C.D. Cal. 2016)
- Telegram Messenger Inc. v. Union of India & Anr., Delhi High Court (June 2026) — Sub judice
Legislation & Rules:
- Information Technology Act, 2000 (India) — Sections 69A, 79
- IT (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking Access to Information by Public) Rules, 2009
- IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (India) & DPDP Rules, 2025
- EU Digital Services Act, 2022 (Regulation 2022/2065)
- EU Digital Markets Act, 2022 (Regulation 2022/1925)
- EU Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR) Proposal — In Trilogue, June 2026
- UK Investigatory Powers Act, 2016
Policy Sources:
- Internet Freedom Foundation, Statement on Telegram Block, 16 June 2026
- European Commission, ProtectEU Security Strategy, June 2025
- MeitY Section 69A Blocking Order re: Telegram (June 2026)
- NTA Press Release on NEET-UG 2026 Re-Examination, 16 June 2026
