Photo: Swaraj Abhiyan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5
The Delhi Police have registered a criminal case against senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan for sharing a digitally altered video of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that appeared to show him making remarks hostile to India. The FIR, numbered 263/26, has been filed at the Special Cell police station, the police said on Wednesday.
What the police say
According to the police, officers on cyber patrol on November 3 noticed a post by the handle @thequotesnews claiming that a doctored video of the Russian minister had been put out from Bhushan’s account, @pbhushan1. In a statement on X, the force said the clip was alleged to spread misleading, defamatory and inflammatory material that could stir public disturbance and rumours.
The case has been registered under Sections 336(4), 353(1)(c), 356 and 340(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which deal with forgery, statements that could cause public mischief and defamation, along with Section 66C of the Information Technology Act. Investigators are now examining the video and tracing how it spread across social media, officials said.
A clip both governments disowned
The fabricated video purported to show Lavrov criticising India’s internal affairs and its purchases of Russian oil. Bhushan had posted it with a caption calling it “a tight slap by the Russian foreign minister on India” and asking what advice External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had been giving Moscow.
The Russian Embassy denied the clip was genuine, and the Ministry of External Affairs’ fact-check unit then flagged it on Tuesday.
Fake Alert!!! The video of the Russian Foreign Minister being used in this post is fake!
MEA FactCheck, on X
The same unit separately debunked another viral post falsely attributed to Jaishankar, which claimed he was disappointed by a “sarcastic” Russian response to his call for peace in Ukraine. In the real footage, the minister described talks with Russia, Ukraine and European countries on protecting shipping and seafarers, restoring grain exports and energy.
Why it matters
The episode lands at a sensitive moment for India-Russia ties. Jaishankar met Lavrov on October 31 on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, where, by his own account, they discussed the Ukraine conflict, the Gulf situation and multilateral issues. Indian and Russian officials have both warned that AI-generated fakes can distort diplomacy when they circulate unchecked.
The case also puts one of the country’s best-known public-interest lawyers, a frequent critic of the government, on the wrong side of a police investigation into online misinformation. By Wednesday morning, Bhushan had not commented publicly on the FIR on his X account.
What happens next
The Special Cell is examining where the video came from and which accounts amplified it. The police have not said whether Bhushan will be summoned for questioning; like anyone named in an FIR, he can approach the courts to challenge it.
