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Arunachal's viral 'war': deepfakes on top of a real standoff

A deepfake of an Indian general 'admitting' Chinese gains in Arunachal Pradesh led a wave of fake border videos. The clips are false. The standoff beneath them, confirmed by India's border police chief, is real.

LSN World News · 31 October 2026

Arunachal's viral 'war': deepfakes on top of a real standoff

<p><em>Special Reporting from LSN News, adapted from today's Asia Behind the Headlines episode. <a href="https://youtu.be/mxWA1EUjDGQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Watch the video on YouTube.</a></em></p>

<p>More than 150,000 views. That is how far the Indian Army's own fact check of a single fake video has travelled on X since it was posted on 25 October. The video showed Lieutenant General Girish Kalia, who commands the Army's Spear Corps, appearing to admit that China had taken control of Asaphila, Longju and Taksing Circle in Arunachal Pradesh, and that troops there were being denied essential supplies.</p>

<p>He never said any of it. The Army's fact-check account, Indian Army Fact Check, says the footage comes from a press briefing Kalia gave in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir, on 27 October 2023, when he was a major general commanding the 28 Infantry Division. In that briefing he spoke about infiltration across the Line of Control. "He made no such statements about Chinese control over Arunachal Pradesh or denial of supplies to the Indian Army," the Army said. According to the Army, the new words were added with AI-enabled lip-syncing and voice cloning laid over the authentic archival footage.</p>

<p>Independent fact-checkers reached the same conclusion. BOOM traced the keyframes to ANI's original post of 27 October 2023 and ran the audio through a deepfake voice detector, which gave it an authenticity score of 18 out of 100. Soch Fact Check matched the footage to the same 2023 recording and found the clip, or claims built on it, in 17 Facebook posts and on Instagram, Threads and X.</p>

<h2>A dozen fakes in a week</h2>

<p>The Kalia video was not alone. From 24 to 29 October, the Army's fact-check account flagged about a dozen misleading posts tied to the China border and Arunachal Pradesh. They included two more deepfakes of senior officers and a funeral video passed off as soldiers killed in clashes with China.</p>

<p>Some recycled real footage from far away. A TikTok video of a Special Operations Forces exercise in Kazakhstan was shared as Indian and Chinese troops facing off in Taksing. Footage of Chinese commercial trucks at Nathu La, the designated India-China border trade point in Sikkim, was presented as an unauthorised Chinese entry into Indian territory. Other fact-checkers found a May 2020 clash at Pangong Tso and a 2024 clash in Myanmar's Shan State circulating as fresh evidence. And in Nepal's Doti district, a buffalo chase during Dashain celebrations on 26 October was shared on TikTok as Arunachal villagers driving out Chinese troops.</p>

<h2>The real standoff underneath</h2>

<p>The fakes landed on fertile ground because something real is happening. Speaking at an Indo-Tibetan Border Police ceremony in Alwar, Rajasthan, on 22 October, the force's director general, Shatrujeet Kapur, said: "In the past few days, a situation arose where face-offs happened at several locations in Arunachal, and it still continues."</p>

<p>The detail behind those face-offs comes from government sources quoted by The Hindu. They said Indian and Chinese troops came face to face near the Maja company operating base during routine patrolling in July, and that both sides pulled back after a brief confrontation. A few days later, one source said, the Chinese army "came back in larger number" and pitched tents "around 6-7 kms within India’s perception of the LAC". That account has not been independently confirmed. Asked about Kapur's remarks, India's foreign ministry spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, referred specifics to the defence ministry and said the situation in the border areas "gets disturbed from time to time when Chinese forces diverge from established patrolling patterns".</p>

<p>Beijing's answer came on 26 October. Foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said China "strictly abides by the relevant agreements and common understandings reached between the two countries, and conducts normal border patrol and control activities". Union minister Kiren Rijiju, for his part, has said there has been no new Chinese occupation in Arunachal Pradesh.</p>

<p>The fakes did not invent this crisis. They inflated a real one, turning a slow, quiet standoff into a war that is not happening: captured territory, dead soldiers, an invasion convoy. Real tension is what makes fake footage believable.</p>

<p>The defence is simple: check the date, check the source, then decide whether to share.</p>

<h2>Sources</h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="https://x.com/MythbusterXX/status/2114400724058804491" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indian Army Fact Check (@MythbusterXX) on X, 25 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/indian-army-debunks-deepfake-video-falsely-claiming-china-took-control-of-arunachal-areas-101793000307043.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hindustan Times, Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.sochfactcheck.com/indian-army-officers-2023-video-altered-to-fabricate-remarks-about-china/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Soch Fact Check, 30 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://x.com/MythbusterXX/status/2114688933951152194" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Indian Army Fact Check on X, 26 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://x.com/MythbusterXX/status/2114650891227672665" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://x.com/MythbusterXX/status/2114650891227672665</a></li>

<li><a href="https://nepal.newschecker.co/en/english/video-showing-dashain-celebration-in-doti-falsely-shared-as-arunachal-residents-chasing-chinese-troops" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Newschecker, 30 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://indianexpress.com/article/india/strictly-abiding-by-relevant-agreements-with-india-says-china-10938172/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Indian Express, 27 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/india-china-faceoff-arunachal-pradesh-border-itbp-chief-congress-pm-modi-3023232-2026-10-23" target="_blank" rel="noopener">India Today, 23 Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/face-off-with-china-continues-at-multiple-locations-along-arunachal-border-itbp-d-g/article71612994.ece" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Hindu</a></li>

<li><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/india-china-border-stand-off-arunachal-pradesh-taksing-b3074636.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Independent, Oct 2026</a></li>

<li><a href="https://theprint.in/diplomacy/situation-gets-disturbed-when-chinese-forces-diverge-from-lac-patrol-paths-mea-on-arunachal-face-offs/3080022/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ThePrint, 23 Oct 2026</a></li>

</ul>