Varanasi Police Call Viral Festival Clip AI-Generated, but Key Evidence Remains Unseen

A short video linked to a festival at Varanasi’s Lat Bhairav temple complex has become the subject of two competing accounts. Posts sharing the clip say it shows police officers watching and filming women performing onstage. Varanasi Police said on September 29 that the video was AI-generated and circulated to damage the force’s reputation. Neither the apparent conduct in the clip nor the police’s explanation should be treated as independently established.

The dispute matters because the video does more than depict a performance: it appears to place uniformed personnel close to the stage, with some seemingly holding up phones. Those images prompted questions about officers’ conduct while on duty. But an online copy cannot, by itself, establish when every part of a scene was recorded, whether it was altered or whether the people it appears to show were present.

How the clip spread

The footage circulated on social media as an apparent recording from celebrations associated with Baba Lat Bhairav. Posts described officers watching or recording dancers, and the clip was reposted with criticism of policing and of the event itself. The Samajwadi Party’s media cell also used the purported video to criticize the state government over performances at religious events. Some posts repeated the location and conduct claims as fact, even though the recording’s provenance had not been established.

The celebrations ran from September 23 to 27, according to the account set out in a police complaint. Officers had been assigned to the area for crowd management. That context confirms why police personnel might have been deployed at the event; it does not verify that officers appeared in the positions shown in the viral clip or did what online captions alleged.

What police have said

Gaurav Banswal, deputy commissioner of police for the Kashi Zone, said the disputed video was entirely AI-generated. He said police examined mobile-phone recordings made by members of the public during the programme and zoomed in on them. According to his account, the officers apparently visible near the stage in the circulating clip were not visible in those other recordings.

Police have also alleged that the video was circulated to tarnish their image. A case was registered at Adampur police station against unidentified people following a complaint by Sub-Inspector Baliram Yadav, who was in charge of the Lat Bhairav outpost. The filing and the stated investigation concern the making or circulation of the disputed material; they do not themselves prove who created it, what technology was used or anyone’s motive for sharing it.

The comparison with bystanders’ recordings is the specific evidence authorities have publicly described. It could be significant if the recordings cover the same moments and vantage points clearly enough to test the disputed images. But a person’s absence from a different camera angle, or from footage taken at a different time, would not alone establish that a clip was AI-generated. The strength of the comparison depends on details not resolved by the statement: what each camera captured, when it captured it and how the recordings were matched.

What remains unverified

The publicly described police explanation does not provide a frame-by-frame comparison, an independently reviewable forensic assessment or a verified chain of custody for the circulating file. It does not identify the first uploader or explain whether investigators believe the whole video was synthesized, existing footage was digitally altered, or some other form of editing was involved. The statement also does not establish independently who intended to harm the police’s reputation.

Conversely, the clip’s circulation and apparently realistic appearance do not authenticate it. To test the competing accounts, an investigator would need the earliest available version of the file, details of where and when it was recorded, and original recordings from other witnesses that show the relevant stage area at the same time. Any technical findings would need to distinguish evidence of manipulation from changes caused by ordinary compression, cropping or reposting.

For now, the soundest description is narrower than either viral certainty or an unqualified declaration that the matter has been debunked: a video prompted allegations about officers at a Varanasi festival; police reject its depiction and say a comparison with other recordings supports an AI-generated-content finding. The underlying material needed to independently test that conclusion has not been established in the public account.