Recently, the Taliban government’s Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, visited India. During this visit, a video spread on the internet in which he is supposedly heard saying in Hindi, “I have told Modiji that if he gives us Taliban some dollars, then we too will build temples for Lord Shiva and Vishnu Devi in Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand, so that many (people) from India can undertake religious pilgrimages to Afghanistan. We have raised the slogan of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ here. We are grateful and indebted to Modiji because Modi has given us a lot of love.”
Through this video, it is being claimed that Muttaqi expressed his intention to build temples for Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu in Afghanistan in exchange for financial assistance from India.
See some posts circulated on Facebook with this claim: here, here, here, here.
See posts circulated on Instagram with the same claim: here, here.
Fact-Check
An investigation by the Rumor Scanner team found that the video circulated in Muttaqi’s name, claiming he spoke about building Hindu temples in Afghanistan, is not genuine. It is an AI-generated fake video.
At the beginning of the investigation, an observation of the video revealed a watermark of the Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI) on the right side. Following this lead, a live video published on the news agency’s YouTube channel on October 12 was found. It was learned that this was footage from a press conference held that day. A comparison of the video in question with this live video shows similarities in the seating posture and the sofa in the background, along with some other ancillary elements. However, even after reviewing the entire video, no statement regarding the construction of Hindu deity temples in Afghanistan was found.
A report published in The Indian Express on October 13 states that Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi held the press conference at the Afghan embassy in New Delhi. In the press conference, he spoke about border clashes with Pakistan, but no comment regarding temple construction in Afghanistan was mentioned in the report.
If Muttaqi had made such a statement, it would have certainly been reported by Indian and international media. However, no evidence of such news being published was found.
Upon observing the video, Rumor Scanner noted that in some frames, Muttaqi’s teeth disappear and then reappear in the next frame, which is a common characteristic of content created with artificial intelligence (AI).
Subsequently, Rumor Scanner analyzed the video using the ‘LIPINC (2024)’ model of the AI-content detection tool ‘Deepfake-o-meter’. The results from this model showed a 100 percent probability of the video being AI-generated.
Therefore, the claim that the Taliban government’s Foreign Minister expressed his intention to build temples for Hindu deities in Afghanistan is completely false.
