NEW DELHI — A video spreading across social media this week appears to show India's Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh, telling soldiers during Diwali that their morale is low. The clip is a fake. The Indian Army's own fact-checking unit has called it digitally manipulated, the original footage shows no such remark, and voice-detection tools flag the audio as generated by artificial intelligence.

The Claim

Versions of the clip circulating on X, Facebook and Instagram show Singh, in a green jacket and black beanie, speaking into a microphone outdoors with soldiers behind him. In the doctored audio he purportedly says, "The morale is very low. Along with you, our morale is also low," and assures the troops that the country will return to better days and become a 'Vishwaguru' again. The Indian Army's fact-checking unit says five accounts circulated the same edited clip between 18:42 and 19:43 hrs on November 9, 2026. The claim travelled fast because it appeared to come from the minister himself, speaking to troops on the border during the country's biggest festival.

The Original Video

The real footage is from November 8, 2026, when Singh visited Sikkim to celebrate Diwali with soldiers of the Trishakti Corps, the 33 Corps deployed in forward areas along the India-China border. He addressed the troops at the Sherathang War Memorial, and the full address is posted on his official YouTube channel under the title 'Interaction with Indian Army personnel in Sikkim on the occasion of Diwali'. News agency footage from the same event matches the viral clip's visuals — the same attire, the same backdrop, the same memorial. In the original speech, Singh extends Diwali greetings to the soldiers and praises their courage, discipline and sacrifices. He says nothing about low morale, and no credible news outlet reported any such remark. A keyword search for the supposed statement across major Indian media returns nothing at all.

What the Detection Tools Found

Fact-checkers who examined the viral clip ran it through several independent detection tools, and all of them pointed the same way. The Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector classified the audio as likely generated by AI. Hive Moderation rated it 99.4 percent likely to contain AI-generated speech. Resemble AI identified the audio as fake, and Undetectable AI also assessed it as likely AI-generated. The visual inconsistencies in the clip match the audio verdict: the words do not line up with the minister's actual address, which is publicly available in full and contains none of the quoted lines.

The Official Response

On November 9, the Indian Army's official fact-checking unit issued a clarification through its accounts on X and Instagram. It said a digitally manipulated video of the Defence Minister was being circulated, falsely portraying him as acknowledging low morale among Indian Army personnel during Diwali celebrations. The unit said the original video shows Singh addressing personnel at the Sherathang War Memorial in Sikkim, extending Diwali greetings and honouring the soldiers' sacrifices — and that the controversial remarks appear nowhere in it. The clarification also noted that the accounts spreading the fake video are based in South Asia, and urged viewers to check sources before amplifying such clips.

Why It Matters

This is not the first fabricated video of an Indian defence figure to go viral this autumn: in October we checked a deepfake that falsely claimed China had seized territory in Arunachal Pradesh and that Indian troops lacked supplies. Doctored clips of senior officials speaking to troops are designed to do damage in two directions at once — to suggest weakness in the armed forces, and to erode trust in what leaders actually say. The pattern is familiar: take genuine footage of a real public appearance, swap in invented audio, and let the minister's own face carry the lie. The defence is equally familiar — compare the clip against the full original, which in this case was published by the minister's own office on the same day.

Our Finding

The claim is False. Rajnath Singh never told Indian Army personnel that their morale was low. The viral video is a digitally manipulated edit of his November 8 Diwali address at the Sherathang War Memorial in Sikkim: the original contains no such remark, four independent detection tools flag the audio as AI-generated, and the Indian Army's fact-checking unit has formally identified the clip as manipulated. Readers should treat the clip as a fabrication and check the full original address before sharing any version of it.