Sushant Singh and Ashutosh Bhardwaj AI media incident
A deepfake video falsely attributed claims about the Kulgam terror attack to a former Army officer by manipulating an interview between a journalist and a.
- Reported date
- Nov 14, 2026
- Target
- Sushant Singh and Ashutosh Bhardwaj
The exact incident date was not established. This entry is dated by its source report.
A viral video circulating on social media falsely depicted a former Army officer, Pravin Sawhney, labeling the November 2026 Kulgam terror attack as a false flag operation. The footage, which appeared to show the officer making these claims, was revealed to be a sophisticated AI-generated fabrication.
What happened
The manipulated content was created by repurposing an original interview uploaded to The Wire’s YouTube channel in March 2025. The authentic footage featured journalist Ashutosh Bhardwaj interviewing Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, regarding the 2019 Balakot airstrikes. The deepfake creators replaced the original audio and manipulated the video to falsely attribute the Kulgam terror attack commentary to Pravin Sawhney, despite the original interview occurring 20 months prior to the attack.
Technical analysis confirmed the fraudulent nature of the clip. Hive Moderation identified a 98% likelihood of AI-generated speech, while Detect Video AI classified the footage as likely manipulated. Furthermore, the Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector assigned the audio an authenticity score of only 2 out of 100, confirming it as a likely deepfake. Both Sushant Singh and Ashutosh Bhardwaj publicly addressed the incident, clarifying that the viral video was AI-manipulated and completely fabricated the content of their earlier conversation.