AI-generated video shared with a false claim of monkeys being fed on the Varanasi Ghats under police guard on Janmashtami
On 16 August 2025, India celebrated Janmashtami, which commemorates the birth anniversary of Lord Shri Krishna. In this context, a video claiming to show monkeys being fed on the Ghats of Varanasi under police guard on the eve of Shri Krishna Janmashtami is going viral on social media platforms (here, here, and here). It is being shared as if it depicts a real incident. A screenshot from this viral video is also being circulated, claiming it shows the ‘Vanara Sadya’ (feast for monkeys) offered at the Shri Dharma Sastha Temple in Sasthamkotta, Kollam district. In this article, we fact-check the truth behind this video.
Claim: The video shows monkeys being fed on the Ghats of Varanasi under police guard on the eve of Shri Krishna Janmashtami.
Fact: The viral video does not depict a real incident; it is AI-generated. Several visual inconsistencies, commonly found in deepfake or AI-generated content, can be observed in the video. Moreover, AI content detection tools such as Hive and Google’s SynthID have also flagged the viral video as AI-generated. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted a relevant keyword search on Google to verify whether monkeys were fed on the Ghats of Varanasi under police guard on the eve of Shri Krishna Janmashtami, but no such reports were found. On closely examining the viral video, several inconsistencies were noticed. The movements of the police officers and monkeys appeared unnatural and unrealistic. For instance, there is a clear inconsistency in the visuals where a police officer is seen holding both a rifle and a flag. Such anomalies are commonly found in AI-generated or deepfake videos (here and here), suggesting that this video may have been created using AI.
To further determine whether the viral video was AI-generated, we analysed it using AI content detection tools such as Hive and Google’s SynthID. Hive indicated a 99.9% likelihood of the video being AI-generated. Similarly, Google’s SynthID tool — a platform designed to detect content created by its AI models — confirmed that the video had indeed been generated using Google AI. Based on this evidence, it is clear that the viral video is AI-generated and does not depict a real incident.
Several posts featuring a screenshot from this viral video are also going viral, claiming that it shows the ‘Vanara Sadya’ (feast for monkeys) offered at the Shri Dharma Sastha Temple in Sasthamkotta, Kollam district. While it is true that the Sree Dharma Sastha Temple in Sasthamkotta, Kerala, conducts the ‘Vanara Sadya,’ a feast served to monkeys on plantain leaves within its premises during Onam (here, here, and here), the photo being circulated is AI-generated.
To sum up, this viral video claiming to show monkeys being fed on the Ghats of Varanasi under police guard on Janmashtami is AI-generated.