Baseless posts about 'Indian engineer' detained in Bahrain share AI image
- Published on March 18, 2026 at 10:40
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA
Bahrain arrested at least a dozen people for allegedly spreading "false news" about Iranian attacks on the country, but an image of a man in handcuffs that posts claimed was an Indian national accused of leaking sensitive information to Israel bears signs it was made with AI. Bahraini authorities released the nationalities of six of the people it arrested, none of which were Indian.
"Bahraini intelligence arrests Indian telecom engineer for passing sensitive data to Israeli Mossad", reads part of a Hindi-language Facebook post on March 10, 2026.
The post adds that the engineer, Nitin Mohan, was detained "for transmitting sensitive geospatial data, photographs and video reconnaissance of strategic locations" to Israel's intelligence service Mossad.
The image shows a man in handcuffs standing before a wall bearing the name and logo of Bahrain's Ministry of Interior.
The image was shared with similar claims on Instagram and X, while other posts shared images of the same man in front of different backgrounds.
Gulf countries, including tiny Bahrain, have become targets for Iran's retaliatory attacks following a joint US-Israeli assault on February 28, 2026 that triggered a region-wide war (archived link).
In a March 8 X post, Bahrain's interior ministry warned that people who take photos of "vital sites and facilities" and publish them on social media "to be used in Iranian aggression are accomplices in this aggression and will be punished according to the law" (archived link).
The following day, the ministry said it had arrested six Asians after they "filmed, published, and reposted videos related to the effects of the treacherous Iranian aggression" (archived link). Of the six, five were from Pakistan and one was from Bangladesh.
On March 15, it announced the arrest of another six people for allegedly posting videos and spreading misinformation about Iranian attacks on the country, but did not disclose their nationalities (archived link). However, an AFP journalist in Lebanon said the accused had Arab names (archived link).
There is no mention of a "Nitin Mohan from India" and the mugshots featured in the Bahrain police's press releases feature plain white backgrounds, unlike the circulating images.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs also refuted the claim in an X post on March 10 (archived link).
A reverse image search on Google found similar images of suspects were published in Bahraini media reports about drug-related arrests, with the blue background featuring an additional line of text that reads "Anti Narcotics Directorate" (archived links here, here, and here).
The various versions of the claim also contain further inconsistencies indicative of AI-generated content, such as the different clothing and background in each mugshot.
Further analysis on the Hive Moderation detector tool found the image is likely to contain AI-generated content.
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation related to the Middle East war.
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