President Droupadi Murmu took a 25-minute sortie in a Rafale fighter jet from Ambala Air Force Station in Haryana on 29 October 2025, becoming the first Indian President to fly in two fighter aircraft. Piloted by Group Captain Amit Gehani, the jet flew at around 15,000 feet and covered nearly 200 km. Murmu had earlier flown in a Sukhoi-30 MKI in 2023 (here and here). Amid this, a video has gone viral on social media claiming that President Murmu said she was blackmailed by PM Modi and the government to sit in the Rafale despite her unwillingness. Let’s find the truth behind this video.
Claim: The viral video shows President Droupadi Murmu saying she was blackmailed by Prime Minister Modi and the government to sit in the Rafale jet.
Fact: The video is digitally altered. The original visuals are from an India Today livestream of the 10th International Women’s Conference held on 14 February 2025, long before President Murmu’s Rafale jet sortie on 29 October 2025, where she made no such remarks. PIB Fact Check has confirmed the clip as fake, and an AI detection tool identified it as a deepfake. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To find the truth, we conducted a keyword search to check if President Murmu made any such statement during any public appearance, but found no results. To trace the origin of the viral video, we performed a reverse image search using keyframes from the video on Google, which led us to an India Today livestream titled “10th International Women’s Conference: President Droupadi Murmu Inaugurates” from 14 February 2025.
The India Today logo, the President’s attire, and the background in the original video perfectly match the viral clip, confirming its source. A side-by-side comparison of the viral video and the original footage clearly shows that both are from the same event. However, the event took place in February 2025, while President Murmu’s Rafale sortie occurred in October 2025, months apart, making it unlikely that her remarks were related to the flight. Moreover, upon reviewing the full video from the original event, we found no such statement made by the President, confirming that the viral clip has been digitally manipulated.
Further, to verify whether the video was a deepfake, we analysed it using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation. The results indicated a 90.2% likelihood of the clip being AI-generated, confirming that the viral video is indeed a deepfake.
Additionally, the government’s fact-checking unit, PIB Fact Check, also addressed the same viral video, clarifying that Pakistani handles were circulating a digitally altered clip of President Droupadi Murmu with false claims that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was using her as a prop to promote Rafale PR. PIB confirmed that the video is fake and that the President made no such statements. These findings further confirm that the viral video is digitally altered.
To sum up, the video claiming that President Droupadi Murmu said she was blackmailed by Prime Minister Modi and the government to sit in the Rafale jet is a deepfake.
