Did CDS Staff Gen Anil Chauhan claim Indian Govt surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China? Fact Check
Claim : Video allegedly shows that Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan has said that the Indian government has surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China due to weak air force.
Conclusion : The claim is totally false. The video has been altered by AI and there is no evidence that CDS Gen. Anil Chauhan has said these words.
Rating : Totally false — 
Several social media users have shared a clip where Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan is talking about how the Indian government has surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China due to a weak Air Force. Facebook user ‘Military Political Affairs’ shared such a claim with the video that can be seen below:
The exact comments from the video are:“I want to assure our naval officers that we should never lose hope. Although, I am aware the Indian government has surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh to China due to our weak air force but be assured that India Navy is not weak, Pakistan will never be able damage any port city of india. Even on May 10th Pakistani Naval ships could not reach Gujarat, their drones did which is a failure on the part of the air defence, not us.”(Sic)
Other users have made similar claims which can be seen here:
FACT CHECK
DigitEYE India decided to investigate this claim and found that it is totally false. There is no credible evidence or reports that confirm that Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan has made such comments. The audio of the video is altered using AI and this deepfake video is not true.
Details:
We first conducted a web search with the phrase “CDS Anil Chauhan statements on India surrendered Arunachal and Ladakh” to learn about the claim. We did not find any reports from credible media outlets or Government sources that confirm such a statement. There are no available videos also from credible channels that account for this.
Next we conducted a reverse image search on the video to learn about the origin. The search took us to a video on Youtube uploaded by the Indian Navy on 29 November, 2025. The video is titled : “PASSING OUT PARADE AUTUMN TERM 2O25” and the exact keyframes match CDS Gen. Anil Chauhan, speaking from timestamp 1:46:38. View the video and screenshot below –
However, his speech was about how incompetence costs lives and, therefore, professional excellence is a duty, not an option. He stressed for complete dedication so that the force remains prepared in peace and victorious in war. He also stated that technology now shapes strategy and tactics, making joint multi-domain operations essential since no service can win a war alone. Further reaffirming that while India is both continental and maritime, its future will be secured at sea and the Indian Navy will play a decisive role in protecting national interests.
This has been confirmed by news agency ANI which shared the original clip on its X account and on the official website of the Indian Navy. Another report by The Hindu has also confirmed that CDS “Anil Chauhan, who congratulated the midshipmen and cadets for their achievement.” View a section from the report below –
Lastly, we extracted the audio from the claim and put it through Resemble AI’s audio detector. The results turned out to be fake, proving that the audio was manipulated using AI. View the results below –
Thus, the claim is totally false.
