A video claiming to show Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman endorsing an investment platform and claiming that people can earn ₹80,000 a day is a deepfake.
BOOM found the original speech by Sitharaman from December 2025, in which she does not give any such investment advise during her address.
In the 2.34 minutes video, Sitharaman can be heard saying, "Unlike others, I don't make empty promises. What's the difference between scammers and me? First, I'm Nirmala Sitharaman and I don't need anything from you. I will show proof that this project really works. Promising instant millions is a lie, but earning 80,000 rupees a day is quite possible."
The Claim
The video is being shared on social media with text overlaid on it that reads, "This video is not for everyone. Only for those who are ready to change their future".
BOOM has received the video on its WhatsApp tipline number (+91 7700906588) with a request for verification.
What We Found: Viral Video Is A Deepfake
1. The Original Video: We first broke the video into keyframes to trace the original footage and ran a reverse image search on them. A search on one such frame led us to a post from DD News Andhra’s Instagram page dated December 28, 2025, featuring a similar video of Sitharaman.
The Finance Minister can be seen wearing the same dress as in the viral video. The news report stated that the video is from an event attended by Sitharaman in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
Taking a cue, we ran a related keyword search on Sitharaman’s official Facebook page and found a post related to the event, including a YouTube link featuring her speech in Telugu. Neither in the video nor in the post were we able to find her promoting any such investment platform or announcing any financial scheme.
2. AI Detector Tools Flag Manipulation: We then tested the video using the AI video detector Deepfake-o-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo, across several parameters. The tool’s deep learning based video face forgery detection and AI video analysis indicated that the video had been manipulated using artificial intelligence.
We also tested Sitharaman’s voice from the viral clip on Truthscan’s AI audio detector, which concluded with a 99 percent probability that the audio is fake and expressed high confidence in its assessment.