A video appearing to show an 'NDTV exclusive' with a comment from a person from Uttar Pradesh claiming to be a former neighbour of the Bondi beach attackers is fake and digitally manipulated.
BOOM found that NDTV did not publish any such report. We also tested the video on AI detector tools, which flagged manipulation by artificial intelligence in the footage.
The video shows NDTV's managing editor Shiv Aroor presenting a report for the outlet, claiming that the Bondi beach attackers are Indian migrants from Uttar Pradesh named Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram. The report also shows a person speaking to NDTV, claiming he is from Uttar Pradesh and a former neighbour of the attacker, Naveed Akram.
Sajid Akram (50) and his son Naveed (24) opened fire at a gathering in a Jewish festival near Bondi beach in Australia on December 14, killing 15. At least 24 were injured and are undergoing treatment. While Sajid was shot dead by the police, Naveed is critically injured and was later charged. According to a report published by The News Minute, Indian authorities visited Sajid's family in Hyderabad where his brother lives to collect details. Meanwhile, BBC News on December 16 reported that Sajid had traveled to Philippines a month before on an Indian passport and his son, Naveed, using an Australian passport quoting border authorities in Manila.
The Claim
An X handle @SAsiaAffairs shared the video with the caption, "When the Australia mass shooting happened, Indians rushed to blame ‘Pakistanis’, just like they did after the Pahalgam attack. Now that the shooters are of Indian origin, will anyone admit the truth, or is lying the default setting?" (sic)
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
What We Found: Viral Report Is A Deepfake
1. AI Detector Tools Flag Manipulation: We first checked NDTV’s official social media handles and ran a related keyword search on Google but no such report claiming that the father-son duo are migrants from Uttar Pradesh were there. We also checked journalist Shiv Aroor’s official social media handles but found no such report shared by him.
Further, the bulletin has a 'Breaking News ticker' that erroneously reads, "suspects liked to India confirmed".
Taking a cue, we tested the audio using AI voice detector tool Hiya. The results from the tool concluded that the voice is likely deepfake, with a probability of being authentic at 1 out of 100.
We tested a major part of the video on Deepfake-o-Meter, an AI detection tool developed by the UB Media Forensics Lab (UB MDFL). Several deep learning-based methods for video face forgery detection and deepfake detection within the tool flagged AI manipulation and indicated that the video is fake.
2. Connection with Hyderabad, India: Telangana Police confirmed the connection of Sajid Akram, one of the Bondi beach attackers, with Hyderabad, India, and stated that Akram migrated to Australia in November 1998 in search of employment. The police official also stated that Akram married a woman of European origin before settling permanently in Australia and identified Naveed Akram as his son, who is an Australian citizen. According to reports, police said that Sajid Akram's son, Naveed, appears to have no connection with India or any local influence in Telangana.
