A digitally altered video is being shared on social media, falsely claiming to show General Upendra Dwivedi, Chief of Army Staff (COAS), saying that the Indian Army will reduce non-Hindu soldiers by over 50 percent by 2028.
BOOM found that the video contains an overlaid AI voice track to make the false claim. In the original news byte from November 1 in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, General Dwivedi made no such statement or reference to the religious composition of the Army.
The Claim: Video shows COAS General Dwivedi saying Army plans to reduce Non-Hindu soldiers by over 50 percent by 2028.
The video was shared on X by the handle '@Baba_Thoka' with the caption, "Breaking News: Hindutva in India finally takes its “One Nation, One Caste” dream to the barracks! Non-caste Hindus in the Army to be shown the door by 2028 because apparently, patriotism now comes with a gotra certificate."
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What We Found:
1) AI Deepfake Voice Detection Tool Results:
We ran the 50-second video through two AI deepfake voice detection tools: Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector and DeepFake-O-Meter by UB Media Forensics Lab. Both tools results confirmed that the voice in the viral video was overlaid onto the original footage.
The Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector gave the voice an authenticity score of 10/100, indicating it’s likely a deepfake, while the DeepFake-O-Meter by UB Media Forensics Lab at the University at Buffalo, confirmed the use of AI giving it a Fake probability of 99.99%.
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2) The original news byte
We checked the original byte by General Upendra Dwivedi, Chief of Army Staff, from November 1 in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh, and found that he had made no such statement or reference to the religious composition of the Army, or talking to Defense Minister Rajnath Singh about it.
The original video was posted by ANI on November 1, 2025, in which General Dwivedi spoke about him visiting TRS College and sharing with students lessons from Operation Sindoor.