Claim: Indian defence chief Gen Anil Chauhan has admitted that his country lost seven planes in the four-day war with Pakistan in May 2025. He also confessed that his country requested a ceasefire.
Fact: The video is not authentic. It was doctored, likely using AI tools, which was confirmed by Soch Fact Check’s analysis. Furthermore, Gen Chauhan does not make any such remarks about losing planes or requesting a ceasefire in the original video from 25 July 2025.
On 25 July 2025, Facebook page ‘Rational Dialogue’ posted a video (archive) of India’s defence chief Gen Anil Chauhan standing at a podium, likely addressing an audience. The clip is captioned as follows:
“انیل چوہان نے کا اعتراف، بھارت نے سات جنگی طیارے کھو دیے اور پاکستان سے جنگ بندی کی درخواست کی۔ ساتواں رافیل اُس وقت سری نگر میں کریش ہوا جب پاکستان نے چار رافیل طیاروں کی فارمیشن کو الیکٹرانک وارفیئر سے لاک کر کے مکمل طور پر بے بس کر دیا۔ اور یوں بھارت کا جنگی جنون خاک میں مل گیا!
[Anil Chauhan has admitted that India lost seven warplanes and requested Pakistan for a ceasefire. The seventh Rafale crashed in Srinagar when Pakistan locked the formation of four Rafale planes through electronic warfare and rendered them completely inoperative. And thus India’s war madness came to an end!]”
In the video, the Indian defence chief says:
“That they do run us up in war and this will be giving examples of Operation Sindoor, which still continues. It’s important to acknowledge here that although we lost seven Indian jets, we went airborne again after just three days and that alone shows our resilience. Our preparedness level has to be very high in 24 x 7, 365 days.
“Again, coming back to the same point that an officer today needs to be much more well-read so that we can contribute to this particular aspect of securing a nation. As was said earlier that they do run us up in war and this will be giving examples of Operation Sindoor, which still continues. Our preparedness level has to be very high in 24 x 7, 365 days.
“We are living in that kind of environment and it’s only scholar-warriors that can ensure this readiness by thinking differently, connecting the dots across this complete kind of a spectrum.
“And, in the same spirit, it must also be said [that] our Hindu ideology stands for peace. Yes, we did ask for a ceasefire, not out of weakness but because we did not want South Asia to suffer the horrors of an all-out war. Peace, after all, is the higher path. I’ve actually given you a number of examples. Initially, when we said that… we thought that… no, the scholar warrior should be a single gentleman actually, kind of… it should… both the scholarly qualities and warrior qualities should lie in one domain.
“But, right from ancient times, we have found that both are complex and that’s why there was Arjun and there was Krishna and there was (sic) two people actually. And throughout history, we’ve seen two people. So, how are we saying that this particular thing should reside in one particular gentleman over here. My particular view is that one genius, one successful general will never make you win a war actually. You don’t require one Manekshaw or one Napoleon to make you win a war; you require actually hundreds of them.”
India-Pakistan conflict
In May 2025, India and Pakistan engaged in the most extensive four-day conflict in decades, exchanging drones, fire, shelling, and missiles and bringing the two nuclear-armed nations to the brink of an all-out war.
The conflict was triggered by the killing of at least 26 people by assailants at a resort in Pahalgam in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir on 22 April. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the attack, a claim which has been denied by Islamabad.
India subsequently launched missiles on what it claimed were “terrorist bases” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and some sites in the Punjab province on 7 May. The missile attack initially killed 31 people, including women and children, according to an Associated Press (AP) report that cited the Pakistani military.
Both sides exchanged heavy shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) in the subsequent days, according to different reports. On the first day of the conflict, Pakistani authorities claimed they had shot down at least five Indian jets.
After launching missiles, India also sent Israeli-made Harop drones to Pakistan, which were reportedly shot down by the army. Soch Fact Check visited and investigated the attacks at two crash sites each in Karachi, Rawalpindi, and Lahore; read our on-ground report here.
The conflict escalated thereafter, with both sides targeting each other’s military bases.
The total death toll was 51, including “40 civilians and 11 military service members”, while close to 200, including 121 civilians, were wounded, according to the Pakistan Army.
On the other hand, India announced that 21 civilians and five soldiers died.
On 10 May, US President Trump announced a ceasefire, which was then confirmed by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and later by India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri.
Trump’s announcement came after US State Secretary Marco Rubio spoke separately to Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, Foreign Minister Dar, and Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.
On the other hand, Pakistan expressed gratitude to the US, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanking Trump “for his leadership and proactive role”, as well as Vice President JD Vance and Rubio “for their valuable contributions for peace in South Asia”.
Pakistani, Indian officials say jets downed
Speaking at different events, PM Sharif said Pakistan downed at least six Indian jets. Islamabad has also denied New Delhi’s claims that it suffered any losses of planes but “acknowledged” its bases were hit.
CNN cited “a high-ranking French intelligence official” who told the outlet that “one Rafale fighter jet operated by the Indian Air Force was downed by Pakistan”. Later, Reuters reported that a US official, who spoke to the publication on the condition of anonymity, said “there was high confidence” that Pakistan brought “down at least two” jets.
On the Indian side, multiple top officials have acknowledged losing at least one fighter jet during the four-day conflict with Pakistan, only stopping short of providing a number for the planes.
Gen Chauhan himself has confirmed that India lost fighter jets during the May conflict but did not specify how many of them were downed, according to his interviews with Bloomberg and Reuters at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
“What is important is that, not the jet being down, but why they were being down. […] Why they were down, what mistakes were made — that are (sic) important. Numbers are not important,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying. According to Reuters, he said, “What was important is, why did these losses occur, and what we’ll do after that.”
Indian Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh said in response to a question by CNBC-TV18 about losing fighter planes, “You have used the term Rafales in the plural, I can assure you that is absolutely not correct.”
Captain Shiv Kumar, India’s defence attache to Indonesia, however, acknowledged that some jets were downed. “I do agree we did lose some aircraft,” he said at a seminar in Indonesia, according to The Wire.
Moreover, in response to a question about Pakistan’s claim of downing Indian fighter jets, Indian Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Air Marshal Awadhesh Kumar Bharti stated that his country’s armed forces were “in a combat situation and losses are a part of combat”, Brut India reported. However, he did not reveal any further information.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check observed multiple inconsistencies, which are telltale signs of content generated using artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Gen Chauhan’s voice seems robotic and stressed, his hands move in an unnatural, repetitive manner, his skin is glossy, and his hair and features appear airbrushed. The name tag on his right contains illegible text and the coat of arms on his left shoulder patch is oddly smoothened over.
We also noticed that his hands, especially knuckles, continue to distort at different moments, even missing thumbs at certain points. Moreover, in some of the frames, the general’s teeth apparently disappear completely and his upper torso also looks a little stiff as compared to a natural pose.
At the 0:44 mark, it appears that he picked up a paper and immediately let it go. Then, at the 1:26 mark, the wooden podium collapses inward but suddenly reverts to its original position at the 1:31 mark. At different points, the light grey portion of the right side of his hair disappears and reappears.
Lastly, the Indian news outlet Asian News International’s (ANI) logo keeps distorting throughout the over-two-minute video and becomes completely illegible towards the end.
Deepfake detectors
We ran the clip through multiple AI detection tools, such as DeepFake-O-Meter, Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector, Attestiv Deepfake Video Detection Software, and Deepware Scanner.
The first tool we tested is DeepFake-O-Meter, developed by the University at Buffalo’s Media Forensics Lab (UB MDFL). Of the available detectors, we used CFM, DSP-FWA, LIPINC, and WAV2LIP-STA; according to the results, the probabilities of the video being AI-generated are 36.1%, 60.1%, 100.0%, and 98.7%, respectively. The combined average, therefore, is 73.7%.
We ran different snippets of the video in Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector; these include “and this will be giving examples of Operation Sindoor, which”, “Yes, we did ask for a ceasefire, not out of weakness”, and “when we said that… we thought that… no, the”. The respective scores were 7, 6, and 15 out of 100, indicating that the audio “is likely a deepfake”.
We also conducted a test using Attestiv Deepfake Video Detection Software, which provided a Technical Suspicion Rating (TSR) of 44; the tool defines a score of 0 as “no evidence” and 100 as “a lot of evidence” of manipulation. It further explained that its analysis means “that parts of the video are PROBABLY SAFE”, but noted that TSR “is an estimate based upon our analysis” but “not a guaranteed or definitive statement of the presence of editing or deepfakes”.
Lastly, we ran the clip Zhuque AI Detection Assistant, although it provided a probability of 57.35% of the content being AI-generated, it concluded that it was “uncertain”.
Sound engineer’s analysis
Soch Fact Check also sought a comment from Shaur Azher, a lecturer who teaches sound design and sound recording at the University of Karachi and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST). He also works as an audio engineer at our sister organisation, Soch Videos, and specialises in mixing and mastering audio.
The voice “doesn’t sound fully natural”, with some parts of it seemingly “digitally altered”, Azher said. “The sharp details one would normally hear in a real voice are removed.”
He explained that the voice does not match the way Gen Chauhan’s mouth moves. “Real recordings always have a bit of background sound, but this one is completely silent between words. The loudness jumps around instead of staying smooth like a normal edited recording,” he added.
The Indian defence chief’s voice rises and falls in a way that “doesn’t sound natural for a real person talking”, the sound engineer noted.
To back his analysis, he provided the following technical observations:
- Synthetic frequencies are observed; the energy is unusually strong between 20 Hertz (Hz) and 1,500 Hz, suggesting artificial processing.
- Higher frequencies are cut off using a low-pass filter and aggressive high-end content is missing.
- Mouth sync is off; the timing of the speech does not match natural lip movement.
- No room tone present, meaning that the recording lacks natural background sound.
- The whole file is not evenly compressed and its dynamics vary in an inconsistent way.
- Monotone is not present; the pitch changes unnaturally rather than following human speech patterns.
The general’s authentic speech
Soch Fact Check also reverse-searched keyframes from the video and found that there is indeed an original speech by Gen Chauhan. It was broadcast by ANI on its YouTube channel on 25 July 2025 and is actually more than 90 minutes long.
According to the outlet, the Indian defence chief was making “remarks at [a] Capstone seminar”, organised by the Indian Air Force (IAF) and Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) in Delhi.
We found that the original speech by Gen Chauhan does not include the exact remarks about jets or ceasefire as in the viral video; some of his sentences are as is but at least three others have been doctored to make his statement in favour of Pakistan’s narrative.
We found that the Indian defence chief’s comments between the 7:49 and the 9:11 marks have been altered. The starting remarks from the viral video are incorrect; he said, “There are no runners-up in war,” not, “That they do run us up in war.”
The first and third sentences are repeated twice in the viral video; however, in the first instance, a fictitious sentence — about the loss of jets — is inserted between them. At a later instance, the part about requesting a ceasefire has been doctored into the clip.
The repetitive parts, errors, and the additions have been explained in the visual below:
Yellow highlights show repetitions, blue highlights show errors, and red highlights additions
The original comments between the 7:49 and the 9:11 marks are as follows:
“As was said earlier, that there are no runners-up in war, and this will be giving examples of Operation Sindoor, which still continues. Our preparedness level has to be very high. It’s 24 x 7, 365 days. We are living in that kind of an environment and it’s only scholar-warriors that can ensure this readiness by thinking differently, connecting the dots across this complete kind of an spectrum.
“I have actually given you a number of examples. Initially, when we said that we thought that the scholar-warrior should be a single gentleman actually… kind of it should both the scholarly qualities and the warrior qualities should lie in one domain. But right from ancient times, we have found that both are complex and that’s why there was Arjuna and there was Krishna and there was two people actually and, throughout history, we have seen two people.
“So, how are we saying that this particular thing should reside in one particular gentleman over here? My particular view is that one genius or one successful general will never make you win a war, actually. You don’t require one Manekshaw or one Napoleon to make you win a war. You require, actually, hundreds of them.”
Also, upon viewing both videos in detail — the altered and the authentic ones — we found that the ring on his right arm is missing in the viral clip as opposed to the original. We also noticed that the general seems to speak much faster in real life as compared to the footage being fact-checked.
His bodily movements are more fluid in the authentic video. We see him looking left, right, and centre, but in the viral video, his attention seems fixated towards his right side.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the Indian defence chief did not admit that his country lost seven planes in the May 2025 conflict with Pakistan nor did he confess that his country requested a ceasefire.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim posted here, here, here, and here on Facebook, here and here on Instagram, and here and here on X (formerly Twitter).
Conclusion: The video is not authentic. It was doctored, likely using AI tools, which was confirmed by Soch Fact Check’s analysis. Furthermore, Gen Chauhan does not make any such remarks in the original video from 25 July 2025.
Background image in cover photo: Saradasish Pradhan
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com