A video circulating on social media purportedly shows an Al Jazeera report confirming Indian involvement in the killing of student leader Sharif Osman Hadi in Bangladesh.
BOOM found that the video has been digitally manipulated, with an AI-generated voice clone being overlaid onto real news footage to promote a false narrative.
The disinformation follows violent protests in Bangladesh after the death of student leader Sharif Osman Hadi. The incident has sparked significant anti-India sentiment, with protesters alleging that the killers escaped across the border into India.
The Claim
The video was shared on X by the account Pakistan Defence (@PakDef_), claiming that Al-Jazeera News confirmed Indian involvement in the killing of Osman Hadi in Bangladesh (archived here). The viral clip features an Al Jazeera journalist purportedly reporting on "growing suspicions of Indian involvement" and alleging that "pro-India factions" were behind the assassination.
What We Found
BOOM found that the viral video is a deepfake created using AI-generated audio and altered visuals.
Original video does not contain viral statement: We traced the original footage to an Al Jazeera report titled "Anger in Bangladesh: Violent protests after the death of a student leader," published on December 19, 2025. We reviewed the entire report and found no mention of Indian involvement in the death of the student leader.
Unusual mechanical movements observed: Upon close analysis, we observed unusual mechanical movements on the speaker's face while speaking, which indicated a high likelihood of the video being AI-generated. The lip movements do not naturally align with the audio track, and the facial expressions appear repetitive, which are common characteristics of deepfake manipulation.
Deepfake detection tools flag AI manipulation: We extracted both the audio and video from the viral clip and ran them through detection models on Deepfake-o-meter, a forensic tool developed by the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensics Lab. A majority of the models returned a high confidence score for AI generation for both the visuals and the soundtrack.
Suspect yet to be identified: News reports confirm that the victim, Sharif Osman Hadi, was a 32-year-old spokesperson for the Inqilab Mancha platform who died in a Singapore hospital on December 18 after being shot in Dhaka by masked assailants. While his death has fueled unrest, authorities are still investigating the perpetrators.
