Controversial writer Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, is sending weapons through Bangladesh to India’s northeastern states to fuel the Cockroach Janata Party protests in India.

To support the claim, he circulated a video that was subsequently shared with the same narrative by Indian news outlets and social media users. However, an investigation by The Dissent found that the video was created using artificial intelligence.

On 22 July, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, editor of the propaganda website Weekly Blitz, posted the video on X.

Alongside the video, he claimed: “Pakistani ISI is smuggling weapons into India’s northeastern states! Bangladesh Police intercepted a three-wheeler near the Comilla-Agartala border and recovered several foreign-made pistols while searching the bag of a madrasa teacher.”

See an archived version of the post here.

The 17-second video shows several people and police officers standing beside a highway. Some of them appear to be holding a bearded man wearing a prayer cap. Several pistol-like objects can be seen lying on the ground in front of them.

A voiceover in the video claims that Bangladesh Police recovered the weapons from a three-wheeler near the Comilla-Agartala border. The detained person is described as a madrasa teacher.

Shoaib Choudhury further claimed in his post that, over the past several weeks, organised groups directly backed by the ISI had been smuggling weapons and explosives through Bangladesh into India’s northeastern states.

Indian media cite Shoaib as their source

Following Shoaib Choudhury’s post, Indian news outlet Zee 24 Ghanta published a report using the same video.

The report claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, was smuggling weapons into India’s northeastern states. It also stated that Bangladesh Police had intercepted a three-wheeler near the Comilla-Agartala border and found several foreign-made pistols in the bag of a madrasa teacher.

See the report here.

Another India-based news outlet, Ei Din, published a report containing the same claim.

It alleged that the Pakistani ISI was smuggling weapons to provoke insurgency in India’s northeastern states. The report also claimed that a large network operating at national and international levels was conspiring to remove Narendra Modi’s government from power in India.

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury’s post was cited as evidence supporting the claim.

Read the report here.

The video also spread among Indian social media users.

Indian senior journalist and columnist Pratim Ranjan Bose posted the video on X and wrote: “Arms and ammunition are being sent from Bangladesh to India.”

See the post here.

See more posts sharing the same claim here and here.

Video created using AI

The Dissent’s investigation identified several visual inconsistencies indicating that the video was generated using artificial intelligence.

After the nine-second mark in the 17-second video, an earlier sequence is repeated. Although the camera angle remains unchanged, a man can be seen standing behind the police in the second sequence who was not present in the first.

At the beginning of the video, a police officer appears to take two pistols out of a briefcase-like object and place them on the ground.

At around the five-second mark, another pistol suddenly appears when the officer touches the ground. The pistol had not been there before. When the officer picks it up and attempts to place it inside the briefcase, it disappears.

At the seven-second mark, another police officer appears to place a pistol beside the officer sitting on the ground. However, the pistol disappears immediately after being placed there.

Between the 11 and 13-second marks, a polythene sack-like object suddenly appears in the hand of a man standing behind the police. Just one second earlier, the man had been raising his hand while speaking, and nothing was visible in his hand.

Moments after the sack appears, the man himself disappears from the scene.

The sudden appearance, transformation and disappearance of people and objects throughout the footage are consistent with common visual anomalies found in AI-generated videos.

For further verification, The Dissent analysed the video using the AI-content detection tool Hive Moderation. The results identified both the video and its voiceover as having been generated using artificial intelligence.

Therefore, an AI-generated video was presented as footage of a real incident to spread the claim that weapons were being smuggled from Bangladesh into India.

Shoaib Choudhury as a source of disinformation about Bangladesh

Since the July 2024 uprising, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has emerged as one of the sources of Bangladesh-related disinformation circulated by Indian media outlets.

His false claims have been used to promote several specific narratives. These include allegations that “a genocide against Hindus is taking place in Bangladesh”, that “Bangladesh has fallen under the control of religious extremists”, and that “international terrorist organisations are operating in Bangladesh”.

The Dissent and several other fact-checking organisations have debunked multiple false claims circulated by him.

See the fact-checks here, here, here, here, here, here and here.