#FactCheck-No, Thai Transgender Women Did Not Assault Indian Army Lieutenant General
Executive Summary
A video is rapidly going viral on social media, with the claim that transgender women assaulted an Indian Army officer in Thailand. The post further claims that the officer had failed to pay the agreed amount, following which the incident took place. A research by CyberPeace’s research wing found that the viral video is fake. In fact, the video shows an incident that took place in Pattaya, Thailand, in December 2025. The 52-year-old Indian national, Raj Jasuja, was allegedly assaulted by a group of transgender women following a dispute over payment for sexual services. Therefore, the claim made in the post is false.
Claim:
A video shared on social media claims that transgender women assaulted an Indian Army general in Thailand.
https://x.com/navyhato/status/2094322001490116659
https://archive.ph/Scfgd
Fact Check:
To verify the claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords but found no credible media reports confirming that Indian Army Lieutenant General Rajiv Kumar Sahni was involved in the incident. During the subsequent research, we compared the viral screenshot with the original report published by The Times of India. The comparison revealed that the original headline, “Indian national Raj Jasuja thrashed by transwomen in Thailand after allegedly refusing to pay for escort service,” had been digitally altered to read, “Indian Army Lieutenant General Rajiv Kumar Sahni thrashed by transwomen in Thailand after allegedly refusing to pay for escort service.” Further, both the viral screenshot and the original report display the same breadcrumb trail — “News / Indian National Raj Jasuja Thrashed By Transwomen In T…”. This provides further evidence that the headline in the viral screenshot was digitally manipulated.
After establishing the context of the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. During the search, we found a report published on The Indian Express website on January 5, 2026, which featured the same visuals as those seen in the viral video. According to the report, a 52-year-old Indian tourist was allegedly assaulted by a group of transgender women in Pattaya, Thailand. The incident reportedly stemmed from a dispute over an unpaid fee for sexual services. The viral video, recorded on December 27, shows three transgender women allegedly assaulting the man with slippers. According to the report, the dispute escalated after the man allegedly refused to pay the amount demanded and attempted to leave the spot in a car. One of the transgender women reportedly accused him of refusing to make the payment. He was subsequently kicked and beaten before emergency responders intervened.
In the next step of our research, we found another report published on the India Today website on January 5, 2026. The report featured the same visuals as those seen in the viral video. According to the report, the incident took place on the morning of December 27, 2025, in the Walking Street area of Pattaya, Thailand.
Conclusion:
Our research found that the claim that Indian Army Lieutenant General Rajiv Kumar Sahni was assaulted in Thailand is false. The viral video actually shows an incident that took place in Pattaya, Thailand, in December 2025, in which 52-year-old Indian national Raj Jasuja was allegedly assaulted by a group of transgender women following a dispute over payment for sexual services. The viral post falsely links the incident to an Indian Army officer, thereby misrepresenting the identity of the person involved.
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Introduction
The trajectory of India's digital economy is growing at an unprecedented rate, and so is India's cybercrime ecosystem. Parliamentary data tabled before the Rajya Sabha in May 2024 by the MHA suggests an overwhelming 900% growth in cybercrime complaints from 2021 to '25, while annual losses crossed 22,800 crore in 2024. The structural issues like the low victim restitution rate, the lack of forensic infrastructure, issues of jurisdiction related to offshore fraud factories targeting Indian citizens, and the huge disparity in awareness levels amongst India's youngest online citizens continue to exist. This brief brings out the clear trends in cybercrime, the role of institutional mechanisms in its prevention and response, failure points, and recommends appropriate policy interventions from the perspective of CyberPeace.
The Data Imperative
Since its operationalisation in 2019 by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), the NCRP serves as India's most significant institutional apparatus for cybercrime reporting and response. Data placed before the Rajya Sabha by the Ministry of Home Affairs on 30 July 2025 show that, with almost no exception, complaints of cybercrime have increased far more quickly than most traditional indicators of public safety. Between 2021 and June 2025, the NCRP received 6.59 million complaints, evidence of both a sustained and escalating expansion of India's cyber threat profile. Complaints per year more than quadrupled from 4.52 lakh in 2021 to 19.18 lakh in 2024 (324% over the period); by 2025, the NCRP had received 28.15 lakh complaints, a 523 percent rise compared with the 2021 baseline:
Clearly, cyber-enabled crime is no longer an occasional crisis but a systemic governance issue requiring consistent regulation and institution-building.
The financial fallout has also accelerated dramatically. Figures indicate that reported financial losses due to cybercrime jumped from 2,290 crore in 2022 to 22,812 crore in 2024 a 895% leap in two years:
Though response mechanisms such as the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) successfully blocked or recovered close to 8,690 crore as of January 2026, victims appear to get back only about 2.18 percent of the losses they report.
In most areas, reporting and response have expanded greatly, but both the rate and scale of cyber-enabled financial fraud continue to outstrip India's remediation and law enforcement capacity.
Threat Typology of India’s Fraud Ecosystem
The nature of cyber crime in India has evolved from an opportunistic volume-based activity to a layered transnational criminal environment. I4C intelligence as tabled in Parliament reveals investment scams as the biggest threat: they accounted for 76% of the financial fraud lost in 2025 (although only 35% of complaints were filed, thus, a very high value per case was lost).
Digital arrest frauds, which tap on citizens' unawareness that "digital arrest" is not permissible under Indian law, rose from 39,925 cases (91 crore) in 2022 to 123,672 cases (1,935crore) in 2024.
The fast rise in the number of incidents as well as in the volume of fraud clearly points out that digital arrest fraud has moved away from the phase of novel scam typology to a formidable cyber-extortion landscape. The main orchestrators of investment, trading, dating, and digital arrest scams targeting Indian citizens were recently identified by the I4C CEO Rajesh Kumar as transnational criminal scam networks in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. Hence, this issue does not only fall within the domain of domestic law enforcement but constitutes a transnational cybercrime requiring parallel financial intelligence, diplomatic initiative, platform responsibility, and international investigative collaboration.
Geographic Concentration
Maharashtra and UP register the highest volumes in total complaints at 3.03 lakh and 3.01 lakh, owing to them being the financial capital and most populous state, respectively. Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, WB, Telangana, TN, Rajasthan, and Haryana register above 1 lakh complaints each. However, the critical information that is being missed is that while complaint rate growth is the fastest in Tier 2 and 3 geographies (Haryana leads per-capita complaint rate with 381/100k people in 2023; Telangana (261); Uttarakhand (243)), this signifies rural digital growth as a risk multiplier.
Institutional Architecture: Mechanisms and Performances
India's institutional response to cybercrime, led by the Ministry of Home Affairs' Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), is one of the world's largest real-time fraud detection and prevention ecosystems. The backbone of this is the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS), which has onboarded over 700 banks, payment service providers, e-commerce portals, digital wallets, and, since the Standard Operating Procedure was issued on 2nd January 2026, virtual asset service providers and crypto exchanges. This interconnected network allows for prompt freezing of funds and timely fraud intervention during the 'golden hour' of a cybercrime report.
Institutional capacity is robust, with approximately 8,690 crore saved via the CFCFRMS since its inception for over 24.65 lakh complaints. The national cybercrime helpline (1930) receives close to 10,000 calls daily, while the Suspect Registry has enabled the rejection of 9,519 crore via the detection of 23.05 lakh suspect entities and 27.37 lakh mule accounts. In parallel, the CyTrain platform has expanded training by registering 151,081 police and judicial officers and issuing 142,025 certificates. Cyberforensic labs in all 33 States and Union Territories have received central assistance totalling 132.93 crore, and data-driven interstate crime analytics and offender linkages through the Samanvaya and Pratibimb platforms have led to 21,857 arrests.
Ecosystem Gaps
Through I4C, CFCFRMS, CyTrain, and the establishment of forensic infrastructure in states, India’s cybercrime ecosystem has greatly grown. But due to the rapid proliferation of cybercrime, systemic shortcomings are revealed regarding the restoration of victims, investigation, forensic capacity, cross-border enforcement, awareness, and stakeholder coordination:
- Victim Restitution Deficit: Although the total of ₹ 8,690 crore frozen has increased, the refund for victim compensation is limited to only ₹ 167 crore (2.18%) due to lengthy restoration processes relying on court orders.
- Forensic Capacity Limitations: 2 national, state-level, unevenly equipped cyber forensic labs can’t match the needs of over 10 million cybercrime complaints per year.
- Low conviction rate: The investigations of cybercrimes suffer from evidence collection and criminal proceedings, leading to limited conviction rates.
- Cross-border enforcement challenges: Many of the investment and digital arrest scams, in fact, are originating from Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, rendering the cybercrime response mechanisms of India helpless.
- Lack of Awareness: First-time digital users are quite prone to online scams and fraud, and many of the victims continue not reporting due to social stigma and lack of confidence.
- Partial Stakeholder Integration: Banks and small financial institutions, small companies, and emerging virtual asset providers not yet on board allow the money to slip through without being tracked.
CyberPeace Insights: Strategic Way Forward
India has already built a relatively mature response structure for cybercrime with I4C, CFCFRMS, and CyTrain and is coordinating the financial sector on it. The way ahead lies in outcome-oriented improvements and not just in the ability to report and intercept more. Here are the priority interventions that address the most important institutional shortcomings identified in the current ecosystem:
- Fast-track victim restoration: Introduce time-bound victim restoration mechanisms for low-value incidents through simplified processes and mandate national-level roll-out of successful Lok Adalat-based settlement mechanisms.
- District-level cyber forensics: Establish cyber forensic support units at the district level and enhance access to mobile, cloud, and blockchain forensic capabilities.
- AI-powered fraud prevention: Mandate deep-fake and voice-clone detection mechanisms across all financial institutions and telecom networks; embed predictive risk analytics into transaction screening frameworks.
- Cyber Suraksha Gram initiative: Increase digital fraud awareness across all common service centres, Jan Dhan enrollment schemes, and rural banking channels, and tackle the awareness asymmetry.
- Regional cybercrime coordination: Establish real-time, operational intelligence-sharing mechanisms with Southeast Asian economies, which have become home to large scam networks preying on Indian citizens.
- Specialised cyber prosecution ecosystem: Develop exclusive cyber courts, standardise digital evidence procedures, and broaden the scope of CyTrain to include the development of specialised cadres of investigators and prosecutors capable of handling increasingly complex cybercrime cases.
Conclusion
The 22,812 crore lost due to cybercrime in 2024 was more than a mere figure; it signifies a serious concern regarding citizen trust, economic security, and digital inclusion. Though India's institutional response to cybercrime is one of the largest, with an operational I4C and a CFCFRMS functioning in real time, the victim compensation and prosecution mechanism falls short. It's time for implementation: faster recovery of resources, increased enforcement, a larger scale of awareness, and finally, translating the institutional innovations into concrete justice for victims nationwide.
References
- https://sansad.in/getFile/annex/270/AU1341_tmaxdx.pdf?source=pqars
- https://www.mha.gov.in/MHA1/Par2017/pdfs/par2025-pdfs/LS02122025/452.pdf
- https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2244504®=3&lang=2
- https://static.pib.gov.in/WriteReadData/specificdocs/documents/2025/oct/doc2025107659501.pdf
- https://www.medianama.com/2025/08/223-india-cybercrime-500-percent-increase-2021-2024/
- https://theprint.in/india/cybercrime-saw-24-spike-in-2025-indians-lost-rs-22495-crore-mainly-in-investment-scams/2859930/
Executive Summary:
Our research has determined that a widely circulated social media image purportedly showing astronaut Sunita Williams with U.S. President Donald Trump and entrepreneur Elon Musk following her return from space is AI-generated. There is no verifiable evidence to suggest that such a meeting took place or was officially announced. The image exhibits clear indicators of AI generation, including inconsistencies in facial features and unnatural detailing.
Claim:
It was claimed on social media that after returning to Earth from space, astronaut Sunita Williams met with U.S. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, as shown in a circulated picture.
Fact Check:
Following a comprehensive analysis using Hive Moderation, the image has been verified as fake and AI-generated. Distinct signs of AI manipulation include unnatural skin texture, inconsistent lighting, and distorted facial features. Furthermore, no credible news sources or official reports substantiate or confirm such a meeting. The image is likely a digitally altered post designed to mislead viewers.
While reviewing the accounts that shared the image, we found that former Indian cricketer Manoj Tiwary had also posted the same image and a video of a space capsule returning, congratulating Sunita Williams on her homecoming. Notably, the image featured a Grok watermark in the bottom right corner, confirming that it was AI-generated.
Additionally, we discovered a post from Grok on X (formerly known as Twitter) featuring the watermark, stating that the image was likely AI-generated.
Conclusion:
As per our research on the viral image of Sunita Williams with Donald Trump and Elon Musk is AI-generated. Indicators such as unnatural facial features, lighting inconsistencies, and a Grok watermark suggest digital manipulation. No credible sources validate the meeting, and a post from Grok on X further supports this finding. This case underscores the need for careful verification before sharing online content to prevent the spread of misinformation.
- Claim: Sunita Williams met Donald Trump and Elon Musk after her space mission.
- Claimed On: Social Media
- Fact Check: False and Misleading
Executive Summary
A video circulating on social media shows Dr. Vikas Divyakirti speaking during a podcast, where he is heard saying, “Those who cannot even memorise and speak four sentences are considered the greatest in India.” Several users are sharing the clip claiming that the remark was aimed at Narendra Modi. However, a research by CyberPeace found the claim to be misleading. The research revealed that the viral clip has been edited and shared out of context. In the original video, Divyakirti made the remarks in reference to film stars, not the Prime Minister.
Claim
On Facebook, a user shared the viral clip with an English caption alleging that Divyakirti criticised Modi, saying he cannot speak without a teleprompter or scripted interviews and has built a false image of greatness.
Similarly, another user shared the video on X, suggesting that people who cannot speak without a teleprompter are still considered great in India, indirectly linking the remark to Modi.
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search using Google Lens. This led us to the original video uploaded on the official YouTube channel of Raj Shamani.
At around the 3:55 mark, the same clip can be seen. During the conversation, Shamani asks whether building a larger-than-life perception actually benefits an individual. Responding to this, Dr. Vikas Divyakirti explains that film stars often have an exaggerated public image. He notes that many of the dialogues they are praised for are not written by them, but by others, and some even rely on teleprompters while speaking. He further adds that there are individuals who cannot even memorise and deliver four sentences or think independently, yet are regarded as great in India. He also mentions that many social media personalities use teleprompters, but audiences remain unaware and assume they possess exceptional knowledge.
Conclusion
The viral claim is misleading. The video has been edited and shared out of context. Dr. Vikas Divyakirti was referring to film stars and social media personalities, not Narendra Modi.
