Imphal/Guwahati/New Delhi:
A BJP MLA in Manipur in a strongly worded statement condemned attempts by unknown people to malign him using a doctored video, amid the ethnic tension in the border state.
Paolienlal Haokip, MLA of Saikot (Scheduled Tribes) constituency, in a post on X shared the doctored video in which a fake voice is heard giving threats in Meiteilon, the language of the valley-dominant community.
The voice has been dubbed and lip-synced to make it sound like the MLA from the Kuki tribes is speaking.
The doctored video with the fake audio has a logo of the news website The Wire on the top right of the screen, an apparent attempt to make it look genuine.
“The video of my interview with The Wire, dubbed with a viral audio clip and made viral on social media is reflective of the mindset of people who radicalise ignorant common people of Manipur’s valley,” Mr Haokip said in the post, alluding to numerous statements by Kuki leaders and civil society organisations that Chief Minister N Biren Singh misled Meiteis into becoming hostile towards the Kuki tribes.
“I condemn such false propaganda,” Mr Haokip, who is also known as one of the fiercest critics of the chief minister, said in the post.
The video of my interview with the wire, dubbed with a viral audio clip and made viral on social media is reflective of the mindset of people who radicalise ignorant common people of Manipur’s valley. I condemn such false propaganda.@thewire_in pic.twitter.com/7pFxnGH737
— Paolienlal Haokip (@paolienlal) February 4, 2025
Initially, it looked like the video was doctored using any commonly available artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
“It’s not even AI,” Mr Haokip told NDTV.
Mr Haokip is one of the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs who in July 2023 demanded a separate administration for the Kuki-dominant hill areas in the state. He alleged “complicity of the state” in the ethnic violence as one of the reasons why it had not been contained. Manipur’s assembly has 60 seats, of which 20 are reserved and the rest is open for anyone.
“Proof of state complicity can clearly be discerned from the fact that what started out as a purely ethnic-communal violence was later on attempted to be portrayed by the chief minister as the state’s war on ‘narcoterrorists’,” Mr Haokip said in July 2023.
The conflict over rights under the Constitution which had been simmering since the pre-statehood days was another reason for the prolonged violence, he had said.
Mr Singh resigned on Sunday, a day before a no-confidence motion to be introduced by the Congress in the budget session of the assembly, which will no longer be held after the Governor cancelled it. The resignation also comes days after the Supreme Court ordered a report from the government forensics lab CFSL in a petition filed by a Kuki organisation, which alleged the chief minister admitted in a leaked tape that he was responsible for the outbreak of clashes. Non-profit Truth Labs said it found 93 per cent probability the voice in the tape was Mr Singh’s.
The state government called the tapes “doctored”.
Mr Haokip is the most recent casualty of doctored malicious content in the intense online narrative battle between the two warring communities in Manipur. There is no one left untouched by virtual swipes and attacks for speaking anything about Manipur, activists say.
Manipur’s ‘Other’ Battles
Lip-sync, morphed photos, fictional AI-generated display pictures (or DPs), videos from other places circulated as from Manipur, social media handles with fake names impersonating people from other communities to malign them, videos with fake subtitles, graphic content from the civil war in Myanmar portrayed as from Manipur, etc – all kinds of tactics to push narratives have been used by both communities in Manipur.
On May 4, 2023, a day after the breakout of clashes in the villages along the interdistrict border of Churachandpur and Bishnupur, some posts on X (formerly Twitter) shared a photo of a woman’s body lying on a road as that of a Meitei woman killed in Churachandpur after she was raped. The photo turned out to be a case from Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura. It turned viral after it jumped to WhatsApp and other platforms. The X handles have since closed the accounts.
In July 2023, a photo posted by some users on X and Facebook showed a member of the BJP’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and his son, and pointed at them as accused in the case of parading two women from the Kuki tribes naked. The political leader filed a police case against unknown people who spread the fake information.
What has been written in the said tweet about Manipur Governor attending the RSS meeting is completely wrong and misleading. The woman in the video is not the Governor of Manipur, nor has the Governor attended any such meeting.1/2@rashtrapatibhvn pic.twitter.com/DCmsbpfNMO
— RAJ BHAVAN MANIPUR (@RajBhavManipur) August 19, 2023
Even former Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey was not spared. Some X users in August 2023 posted a video falsely claiming the Governor attended an event hosted by the RSS to discuss narcoterrorism. The Raj Bhavan in a post on its official X handle said the woman in the video was not the Governor, nor has the Governor attended any such meeting, and ordered the police to investigate the handles that posted the malicious content.
These are some examples. Numerous others can be found even today, nearly two years since the outbreak of ethnic hostilities in Manipur.
AI-Generated Photos
Last month, an X handle impersonating a fictional young woman using AI-generated profile photos revealed – though inadvertently – himself as a man after he posted a query to the Imphal office of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) with his enrolment number.
After checking with the Imphal IGNOU office, the local media reported a 44-year-old man identified as Brajesh Singh ran the handle ‘Kiara Jain’ (@Kiaraa_jain). He mentioned his new address and regional IGNOU centre as ‘IGAR South Mantripukhri Imphal Manipur’, and his old address as ‘Drona Boys Hostel Garhi Udhampur Jammu and Kashmir’.
IGAR is short for Inspector General Assam Rifles.
The X handle ‘Kiara Jain’ has been deactivated now. ‘Kiara Jain’ had also taken swipes at the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deployed in Manipur.
AI-generated profile photos of the now-deleted X account @Kiaraa_jain run by a 44-year-old man
This matter is under investigation, state government sources had told NDTV last month. They said it was wrong to speculate or assume anything just because somebody gave their address as IGAR in a distance-learning university form. They declined to comment when asked whether a first information report (FIR) has been filed.
This case, and many others indicate there has been no let-up in online battles over Manipur. On the Internet, members of the Meitei community and the Kuki tribes – the two warring sides – have not slowed down a bit, though the government claims the situation on the ground has somewhat stabilised with no big incidents reported from the foothills, or areas where the valley meets the hills.
The Kuki tribes and the Meiteis have been fighting since May 2023 over a range of issues such as land rights and political representation.
The general category Meiteis want to be included under the Scheduled Tribes category, while the Kukis who share ethnic ties with people in neighbouring Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram want a separate administration carved out of Manipur, citing discrimination and unequal share of resources and power with the Meiteis.
