Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media. The video looked like a snippet from a news show. It featured former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
In the video Dharmendra Pradhan was seen threatening to expose the BJP after he was asked to step down. During the investigation we found that the video is a deepfake and the former Education Minister did not threaten to expose the BJP.
Claim:
Instagram user Sunil Saxena Yadav shared the viral video on his profile.
Other users are also sharing same video with similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video. We cropped the keyframes and then ran a reverse image search.
This led us to a news report uploaded on the YouTube channel of NDTV over 9 days ago.
The anchor in the frame was the same as in the viral video.
We then ran a reverse image search on the keyframe featuring Dharmendra Pradhan, this led us to a video of a press conference led by former Education Minister, posted by ANI over two months ago.
This was a detailed media briefing on NEET paper leak and re-examination. In the entire video he did not threaten to expose the BJP.
We then ran the voice from the video through the Hiya Audio detector in the InVid tool. The tool detected 90 percent voice cloning.
Conclusion: Former Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan did not threaten to expose the BJP. The viral video is a deepfake. The viral claim is false.
