By Nivedita Niranjankumar
An old video of Congress leader and former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Kamal Nath, claiming he promised a mosque and the reinstatement of Article 370 to Muslims in a meeting, is a deepfake.
BOOM found that the audio in the clip, claiming to be that of Kamal Nath, is an audio voice clone and not his own voice.
In the viral video, Nath can be seen talking to a group of people most of them Muslims. The overlaid audio claims, "I have been thinking for a long time that I should talk to you. But please understand that this should not leave the room. We are very worried about you and also care about you. That is why Congress wishes that muslim brothers stand with us so that we can take future decisions that benefit you. I would like to assure you, support us and you will get your land for a mosque and we will also look at (Article) 370. I cannot discuss everything openly..."
The video was posted on X with a text in Hindi that translates to, "Congressmen, don't let this video fall into the hands of BJP."
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Posts with the same caption are also being shared on Facebook.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is old and the overlaid voice is a deepfake audio.
We fact checked the same video in November 2023 when it was viral a week before Madhya Pradesh held the state assembly elections.
We had then found that the original video is from November 14, 2018 when Kamal Nath met with Muslim voters. In the original video, Nath is not talking about a mosque or Article 370, but appealing to the the minority community to vote for Congress while asking them to remain alert to the "tactics of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)".
The same video had also gone viral in 2018, with then Bharatiya Janata Party leaders posting it on social media platforms, criticising Kamal Nath for his comments about RSS and Narendra Modi. A news report about the video, dated November 14, 2018 report by the Times Of India, says, "Kamal Nath’s video addressing minority Muslims in the state Congress office went viral within minutes as BJP leaders started tweeting and retweeting it fiercely."
The video and Nath's comments were widely reported in several media reports from 2018 including by Lokmat Hindi and Jagran
In the original video, Nath can be heard saying, "What are the RSS workers doing these days? I have information.....They just have two lines to speak. If you want to vote for Hindus, vote for Hindu Tiger Modi. And if you want to vote for Muslims, vote for Congress party. This is their strategy. You have to be extremely careful, they will try to instigate you. We will deal with them later. But till the day of elections, you have to endure them."
For the new claim, BOOM ran the video through Itisaar, a deepfake analysis tool created by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur. The tool confirmed that the voice over is an AI generated audio.
