Deepfake video of Indian general shared with false claims about torpedoed Iran ship
- Published on March 18, 2026 at 03:32
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
An Iranian ship was sunk by a US submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka on March 4, 2026, killing at least 84 sailors, but a video circulating online of India's army chief saying that the South Asian country had shared the frigate's location with Israel is digitally altered. The original footage shows the general discussing India's military operation against Pakistan in 2025, while detection tools found the audio track in the circulating video was generated with AI.
"The Indian General has admitted that India gave the location of the Iranian plane to the US ally," reads a March 13, 2026, Facebook post sharing a clip of India's Chief of Army Staff Upendra Dwivedi giving a speech.
"Because India has agreements, it was obliged to give the location, it has been proven that it was India that deceived Iran."
The video, which includes a logo for Indian news site Firstpost, shows the general purportedly saying that while the Iranian naval ship's sinking was "unfortunate", it was done in international waters and not Indian territory.
"As long as the Iranian ship remained in Indian waters, they remained protected, but when they crossed the international waters as Israeli strategic allies, it was our duty to inform Israel about their exact location as a part of our newer strategic deal," Dwivedi can be heard saying.
"We can provide Israel with location or intelligence, but we had no part in the Israeli and US joint torpedo attack," he says, adding that India has no part in "Iran's war".
The same video circulated elsewhere on Facebook and X after a US submarine torpedoed the IRIS Dena, an Iranian frigate, in waters off Sri Lanka's southern coast on March 4, expanding the joint US-Israeli war against Iran to the Indian Ocean (archived link).
Sri Lanka repatriated the remains of 84 sailors killed in the attack, but 64 remain missing, while another 32 survivors will stay in the island nation for the time being (archived link).
A second Iranian warship, the IRIS Bushehr, was allowed into Sri Lankan waters a day after Dena was sunk. Sri Lanka is providing safe harbour for the ship and its crew of more than 200. India, meanwhile, said it had allowed a third Iranian warship, the IRIS Lavan, to dock in one of its ports on "humane" grounds after it too reported engine problems.
Both Colombo and New Delhi have said they provided shelter to the Iranian sailors due to "humanitarian considerations" amid fears that they too could be killed in US attacks.
The three ships were part of a multinational naval exercise held by India before the start of the war in the Middle East.
However, the circulating video of the Indian army chief has been manipulated.
AFP conducted reverse image and keyword searches on Google based on a chyron reading "Raisina Dialogue 2026 x Firstpost" seen in the altered video, which led to longer footage uploaded by the official Firstpost YouTube channel on March 7 (archived link).
The video is titled: "India's Army Chief Speaks on Op Sindoor, Pakistan and Future of Warfare | Raisina Dialogue 2026."
In the interview, Dwivedi speaks about India's "Operation Sindoor" -- the country's name for a four-day conflict with rival Pakistan in May 2025 in which both sides claimed victory -- with strategic affairs analyst Harsh V. Pant (archived link).
The circulating clip corresponds to the Firstpost video's 1:18-mark.
At no point in the interview does Dwivedi refer to tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran or to any alleged attack on an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean.
Dwivedi's voice in the circulating video also sounds unnaturally flat, while his mouth movements do not line up with his speech.
An analysis of the video's audio using the Hiya voice-cloning detection tool, available on the Verification Plugin, also known as InVID-WeVerify, found a 99 percent chance it was AI-generated.
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation related to the conflict in Iran.
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