Claim: A video shows Major General GD Bakshi (Retd) saying India cannot harm Pakistan while Field Marshal General Asim Munir is in power.
Fact: The claim is false as the viral clip includes altered audio over original footage posted by the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) on 4 January 2026, where Bakshi did not make the statement attributed to him.
A graphic and a video circulating on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, claim that India’s retired Major General GD Bakshi said his country cannot harm Pakistan while military chief, Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, remains in power.
Bakshi often appears in television programmes and political talk shows as a commentator on national security and the military.
Soch Fact Check found the claim circulating on 3 July 2026 across multiple social media platforms. A Facebook post carrying the claim had 81 shares and 366 comments at the time it was archived. The graphic in Roman Urdu says:
“Jab Tak Pakistan Mein FM Asim Munir Baitha Hai Tab Tak Bharat Pakistan Ka Kuch Bhi Nahi Bigar Sakta: Indian Gen (R) GD Bakshi.” This translates to: “As long as Field Marshal Asim Munir is in Pakistan, India cannot harm Pakistan in any way.
The video in the claim carries the following audio in Hindi/Urdu: “بھارت اب پاکستان سے یدھ کرنے کی شمتا نہیں رکھتا۔ مجھے دکھ ہوتا ہے لیکن آتم نربھر بھارت کے نام پر بھارت کی نیشنل ٹریژری کو لوٹ لوٹ کر سارا پیسہ امبانی لے گئے ہیں۔ جب تک پاکستان میں عاصم منیر بیٹھا ہے، تب تک بھارت پاکستان کا کچھ نہیں بگاڑ سکتا۔ ہمیں کچھ بھی کر کے اس عاصم منیر کو گرانا ہے اور اڈانی اور امبانی کے بزنس ایمپائر کو ختم کرنا ہے۔ مودی جی سے یہ کام نہیں ہوگا، ان کی شمتا نہیں ہے۔ یہ کام اب صرف یوگی جی ہی کر سکتے ہیں۔”
[Translation: “India no longer has the ability to wage war against Pakistan. It pains me, but in the name of Aatmanirbhar Bharat (Self-Reliant India), India’s national treasury has been looted and all the money has gone to Ambani and Adani. As long as Asim Munir is in Pakistan, India cannot harm Pakistan in any way. We have to remove Asim Munir by any means and end Adani and Ambani’s business empire. Modi ji cannot do this work, he does not have the ability. Now only Yogi ji can do this work.”]
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reviewed the viral graphic and video and found that neither provide a credible source for the alleged quote. They also do not mention a date, interview, programme, news outlet or platform where Bakshi reportedly made these remarks.
To trace the original video, Soch Fact Check started with a keyframe from the viral clip shared by the digital publication Inshort News’s Instagram page. The frame shows retired Bakshi speaking to reporters, with an “IANS Wire Service” microphone visible near him.
Since the microphone identified IANS as the likely source, we searched “GD Bakshi IANS” on X (formerly Twitter) after searches on other platforms did not lead to the original clip. Our search led to a related X post showing the same interview setting. Since that post indicated that the video had originally been posted by IANS, Soch Fact Check then searched from:ians_india Bakshi on X, leading us to the original clip.
The original video was posted on 4 January 2026. We compared it with the viral clip and found that Bakshi’s clothing, background, microphone placement, posture, and interview settings matched. However, the audio does not match the viral claim.
A side-by-side comparison of the viral Inshort.pk clip, left, and the original Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) post, right, shows matching visuals, including Bakshi’s clothing, background, microphone placement, and interview setting.
A side-by-side comparison of the viral Inshort.pk clip, left, and the original Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) post, right, shows matching visuals, including Bakshi’s clothing, background, microphone placement, and interview setting.
In the original IANS video, Bakshi discusses Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile system, radar, and air defence infrastructure. However, he does not say that India cannot harm Islamabad while Field Marshal Munir remains in power.
Soch Fact Check also searched the alleged quote using key terms, including “G D Bakshi Asim Munir,” “GD Bakshi India cannot harm Pakistan,” and “Field Marshal Asim Munir G D Bakshi.” These did not lead to any credible news report, official video, verified social media post or interview showing that the Indian Army officer Bakshi made the statement.
To verify if the original IANS video may have been manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) tools, Soch Fact Check then tested the clip in question using various deepfake detection tools.
Hive Moderation flagged the clip as likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content, with a 98.9% likelihood of AI-generated speech but 0% chances for altered video.
This supports our suspicion that the viral clip used original footage with altered audio.
Soch Fact Check also tested the clip on DeepFake-O-Meter, an AI content detection platform. Three of its models returned high AI-generated likelihood scores: AVSRDD at 100%, LIPINC at 98.2%, and WAV2LIP-STA at 98.3%.
AVSRDD is an audio-visual speech recognition-based detector that checks speech correlation between audio and video, while LIPINC and WAV2LIP-STA are used for detecting lip-syncing deepfakes by analysing mouth-region, frame-level, and video-level inconsistencies. These results suggested that the clip likely uses original footage with manipulated audio or lip-sync inconsistency, rather than showing that the entire video was AI-generated.
Screenshot of the altered video uploaded to Hive Moderation, showing a 98.9% likelihood of AI-generated speech and 0% likelihood of AI-generated video or deepfake video.
Screenshot of the altered video tested on Deepfake-O-Meter, showing high AI-generated likelihood scores on AVSRDD, LIPINC and WAV2LIP-STA, while other models returned lower scores.
The conclusion is based primarily on tracing the clip to the original IANS video, comparing the visuals, and confirming that the original audio does not contain the statement attributed to Bakshi. We supplemented our findings by running the video through AI detection tools.
NewsMeter, an India-based signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), also traced the viral video to the same IANS footage and came to the same conclusion as ours. Soch Fact Check treats these previous fact-checks as secondary evidence.
Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the remark has been falsely attributed to Bakshi and that the viral video uses altered audio over original footage from IANS.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
The claim was shared widely on Facebook, with posts collectively receiving at least 3,199 likes, 1,314 comments and 223 shares.
The highest engagement appeared on Facebook page ‘Scroll Pakistan’, where one post received 1,317 likes, 366 comments and 81 shares.
The claim also circulated on Instagram, where posts collectively received at least 5,906 likes, 1,331 comments and 91 shares.
It was also shared on Threads by Wakeup Pakistan and PakSphere.
Conclusion: Retired Indian Major General GD Bakshi did not say India cannot harm Pakistan while Field Marshal Asim Munir remains in power. The viral video uses altered audio over original Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) footage.
Retired Indian general GD Bakshi did not say India cannot harm Pakistan while Field Marshal Asim Munir remains in power. The viral video uses altered audio over original Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) footage in which Bakshi discusses Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied S-300 missile systems and air defence infrastructure. AI-detection tools also flagged the clip’s speech as likely AI-generated, but Soch Fact Check’s finding rests primarily on the original video and visual comparison.
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com