Every week, the internet throws up a fresh batch of videos, photographs and captions that are designed to make us feel something before we think. This week, the backdrop is the massive protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. As thousands of students and activists took to the streets, social media became a battlefield of narratives. Some posts were genuine expressions of anger; others were old clips, AI-generated fabrications, or misleadingly captioned moments from unrelated events. The danger is not just that we might share a false story, but that each false story chips away at our ability to trust anything. That is why fact-checking matters. Newschecker has spent the week sorting through the most viral claims, and the findings are a reminder of how easily our emotions can be weaponized. From a terrifying video that supposedly showed Delhi Police firing at protesters to a fake clip of a “Gen-Z girl” criticising the movement, from an old Greta Thunberg video to a misidentified courtroom confrontation, the misinformation has taken many forms. The protests themselves are real, and the grievances behind them deserve to be heard. But the stories being told about them are not always true. In a time when a single clip can ignite outrage, the most important thing we can do is pause and ask: what am I actually looking at? Here is a closer look at the top fact-checks of the week, and what they tell us about the way falsehoods spread.
One of the most alarming videos to circulate claimed to show Delhi Police firing at people protesting against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on October 10. The clip was shared with a caption that made the blood run cold: 13 people had been killed, the posts said. In a moment of high tension, with protesters and police already clashing in the capital, such a claim could easily push people over the edge. It could justify rage, deepen divisions, and even provoke violence. But when Newschecker examined the video, the claim fell apart. The footage did not show what the captions said it showed. There was no evidence of 13 deaths, and the video was not from the protest in question. It is not hard to understand why the clip spread: the idea of police firing on unarmed protesters is one of the most emotionally charged images in any democracy. It triggers fear, anger and a sense of injustice. But that is precisely why it needed to be checked. In the fog of a protest, the first casualty is often the truth. A false video of police violence does not help the cause of accountability; it only makes it harder for real incidents of brutality to be believed. The fact-check did not dismiss the possibility that protesters had legitimate grievances, nor did it defend the police. It simply said: this particular video is not proof of what you think it is. That distinction matters, because if we accept every viral clip as truth, we become puppets of whoever benefits from the chaos. The next time a video makes your heart race, it is worth remembering that the person who shared it may not have your best interests at heart.
Not all misinformation is dark and violent. Some of it is almost absurd, which makes it even more insidious. One viral video appeared to show a “Gen-Z girl” criticising the protest led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The video was shared widely, with many people celebrating it as proof that young people were not behind the protests. But Newschecker found that the video was generated using artificial intelligence. The woman in the video did not exist, or at least the video did not show a real person speaking her own words. This is a new and frightening frontier of misinformation. AI tools can now create realistic faces, voices and gestures, making it nearly impossible for the average viewer to tell what is real. The fake video was not just a harmless prank; it was designed to shape public opinion by manufacturing a voice of dissent. Similarly, a video of climate activist Greta Thunberg was shared with the claim that she had joined an Indian students’ demonstration in London demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner. The idea was appealing: a global icon lending her voice to the cause would give the protest international legitimacy. But Newschecker found the video was old and misleading. Thunberg was not joining the current protest. She may have been at a different event, or the clip may have been from a completely unrelated moment. Either way, the claim was false. These two fact-checks show that misinformation is not always about inventing terrible events; sometimes it is about borrowing old faces and fake voices to create a story that feels true. The result is a world where we cannot trust our own eyes and ears, and where the line between reality and fabrication becomes dangerously thin.
Another video that went viral during the anti-CEC protests seemed to show a male Congress worker attacking a female Delhi Police officer. The caption was simple and damning: a political worker, supposedly from the Congress party, had crossed the line and assaulted a woman in uniform. In the charged atmosphere of the protests, this was enough to spark outrage. But when Newschecker looked into the footage, the reality was more complicated. The video actually showed an altercation between the NSUI national secretary and a female Delhi Police officer inside a bus during the detention of protesters. It was not a random attack by a male worker on a woman; it was a confrontation that happened in the context of arrests and detentions. That does not necessarily mean the altercation was justified, and it does not mean the officer was in the wrong. But it does mean the viral caption was misleading. The video was stripped of its context and repackaged as a simple story of political aggression. This is a classic technique in misinformation: take a messy, complicated moment, remove the context, and give it a clean narrative that fits a political agenda. The truth, as always, is messier. Protests are chaotic. People get shoved, tempers flare, and both sides may behave badly. But when a video is shared without context, it is not an act of information; it is an act of manipulation. The fact-check did not absolve anyone, but it restored the missing details. It reminded us that a single clip, no matter how shocking, is rarely the whole story. We have all seen videos that seem to prove something important, only to learn later that the beginning was cut, the end was missing, or the setting was completely different. That is why context is not a luxury; it is a necessity.
Perhaps the most emotionally powerful piece of misinformation this week was a video that appeared to show a Supreme Court lawyer engaging in a heated argument with Chief Justice of India Surya Kant. In the clip, the lawyer is heard saying that “the country is burning.” The video was shared amid the protests against the Chief Election Commissioner, and it seemed to confirm a growing narrative: even the legal community, the last bastion of institutional faith, was losing patience. But Newschecker found that the video was old and from the Jharkhand High Court, not the Supreme Court. The lawyer in the video was not arguing with CJI Surya Kant, and the exchange had nothing to do with the current protests. The phrase “the country is burning” may have been real, but it was spoken in a different context, at a different time, in a different court. The video was a perfect example of how context is the first thing that gets lost in a viral moment. A viewer watching the clip on social media would have no way of knowing that it was old or that it was from a different court. The caption did the work of creating a false connection, and the image of a lawyer confronting the Chief Justice was so powerful that it spread quickly. This is how misinformation works: it takes a real moment, strips it of its history, and drops it into a new story. The result is a lie that feels more real than the truth. The fact-check did not deny that the lawyer said the words, but it showed that the words were not part of the current protest narrative. In a time when every institution is under scrutiny, such false connections can deepen cynicism and make it harder for genuine criticism to be heard. When everything is presented as a crisis, we lose the ability to distinguish between real problems and manufactured outrage.
Taken together, these five fact-checks tell a sobering story about the state of public discourse. Misinformation is not a random accident; it is a deliberate tool, used to shape how we see the world. Sometimes it is violent, like the false claim of police firing and deaths. Sometimes it is technological, like the AI-generated video of a young woman. Sometimes it is old footage recycled for a new purpose, like the Greta Thunberg clip and the Jharkhand court video. And sometimes it is a matter of missing context, like the bus altercation between an NSUI leader and a police officer. In every case, the goal is the same: to make us react before we think. The emotional pull of these videos is strong. We want to believe that the world is as simple as the captions suggest. We want to know who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong. But reality is never that simple. The protests against the Chief Election Commissioner are a real event, with real people and real grievances. That is precisely why they deserve honest reporting, not fabricated videos and misleading captions. The best response to misinformation is not cynicism, but curiosity. Before sharing a video, ask: where did this come from? Who is telling me this? What might I be missing? Fact-checkers like Newschecker do this work every day, but they cannot do it alone. In the end, the responsibility falls on all of us. We can choose to be passive consumers of outrage, or we can choose to be careful readers of the world. The truth may be less dramatic than the lie, but it is the only thing that can actually hold power to account. So the next time a video makes your blood boil, pause. Take a breath. Check the facts. Because in a world full of manufactured anger, the most radical act is to demand the truth.