Hyderabad: General Dhiraj Seth took charge as the new Chief of Army Staff on June 30, succeeding General Upendra Dwivedi, who retired after 40 years of service.
Following Seth's appointment, two videos featuring Dhiraj Seth and Upendra Dwivedi began circulating on social media, claiming to show them making anti-government statements over the alleged failure of Operation Sindoor.
Both videos were initially shared by Pakistani propaganda accounts that are blocked in India. They were later reshared by several social media users.
The video featuring Upendra Dwivedi
In the video featuring the former Chief of Army Staff can be heard saying, "What happened in parliament was unfathomable. We are being made scapegoats for something that we never participated in. It was centre's decision to hide the casualties in Operation Sindoor." (Archive)
He further said, "Minister Rajnath Singh clearly said in parliament on oath that the Indian army suffered no losses, and now people like Vikram Misri are being used to set blame on military leadership, exonerating the political decision-making, which we followed."
At the end of the video, he said that because of these reasons, he is resigning from his post and giving the command to General Dhiraj Seth.
The video featuring General Dhiraj Seth
In the video, allegedly featuring Dhiraj Seth, he could be heard saying, "I want to start by showing my immense pride for the armed forces who participated in Operation Sindoor. It was a sad spectacle to see that our previous military regime decided to hide the dead bodies of our jawans to establish their own PR, and no one kept Minister Rajnath Singh and Prime Minister Modi in the dark."
He continued, "I, as a professional soldier, was left aghast at this blatant disrespect of our martyrs. This is intolerable. We have to pay our respect to our martyrs. I appreciate this step of Prime Minister Modi. Indian armed forces will continue to serve the ideology of our prime minister."
A user named Khorasan Ghag posted the
The videos were joined in a thread with the narrative that the former Chief of Army Staff retired because of Operation Sindoor and that the newly appointed Chief of Army Staff continued the narrative by criticising the government
Now the question is, are they real?
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claims are false. Two AI-manipulated videos were falsely shared as showing the former and the current Chief of Army Staff criticising the government.
Original version of both videos
We watched the complete interview shared by ANI in parts on X. Nowhere in his speech does Upendra Dwivedi criticise the government over the alleged failure of Operation Sindoor or make any controversial statements. His statements were manipulated in the viral video to make misleading claims.
According to news reports, Dwivedi retired from his post after serving in the Army for 40 years. There are no reports stating that he resigned because of the government's alleged failure in Operation Sindoor.
We compared Dwivedi's original voice with the voice in the viral video and found that they do not match at all. The audio track in the viral video is very monotonous and includes several characteristics of an AI-generated voice.
We ran the video through the AI-content detection tool Hive Moderation, which detected that the audio was AI-generated with a probability of more than 74 per cent. However, the tool did not detect any manipulation in the visuals.
The official YouTube channel of the Indian Army ADGPI-INDIAN ARMY shared the original version of the video featuring the newly appointed Chief of Army Staff on July 1 on YouTube.
The video shows Dhiraj Seth delivering his acceptance speech, in which he expresses his gratitude to the Indian Army. He thanks the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister before outlining what his tenure will look like and the initiatives he plans to undertake.
Similar to the previous video, he never mentions Operation Sindoor or criticises the government.
Hive Moderation detected AI-generated audio manipulation in this video as well, with a confidence score of over 97 per cent.
Therefore, we conclude that the claims are false.