Fake BBC report falsely implicates Indian passenger and pilot in Flydubai hijacking attempt – Truth or Fake

One account known for spreading anti-Indian disinformation and fake news shared what it claimed was a «BBC» news report about the attempted hijacking.

In the video, a presenter claims that an Indian passenger, Raghav Menon, was responsible for the incident. The caption of the post further alleges that two Indian nationals secretly met with Mossad and recruited Menon – described as a former Indian intelligence RAW agent – who was supposedly working with the pilot, Smit Machchhar.

But the video is a deepfake, and the claims it contains are unfounded.

The BBC never broadcast this report. Footage of BBC presenter Sally Bundock has been digitally manipulated, as has the accompanying audio. Using the Mever deepfake detector, part of the InVID verification tool developed by AFP, we found a 99% probability that the video was AI-generated.

We also found genuine footage from two days ago of Bundock presenting a segment about OpenAI while wearing the same outfit. This appears to be the source footage used to create the deepfake, although we cannot establish with certainty whether it is the exact clip used.

There are further visual signs of manipulation. The graphics and fonts used in the fake report do not match the BBC’s usual visual style. The presenter’s mouth movements appear blurred, while the voice has characteristics of digitally manipulated audio. An AI watermark is also visible in the top-left corner.

The claims about a Raghav Menon are not supported by any verified sources we could find.

The only confirmed link to India is that the pilot who was stabbed, Smit Machchhar, is an Indian national. There is no verified evidence that he was involved in planning the incident or that any Indian passenger played a role. Far from being an accomplice, Machchhar is being lauded as a «true hero» by both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian leader Narendra Modi for his courage during the flight.

The fake report also incorporates another misleading video, apparently intended to make it appear connected to the FlyDubai incident. Embedded in the BBC deepfake is a mobile video of a FlyDubai aircraft flying above a city skyline. But it was not filmed during the attempted hijacking and is not linked to this incident.

The skyline can be identified as Dubai, including the distinctive Hyatt Regency hotel and its circular rooftop structure. This indicates the footage was filmed in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Flight FZ1073, however, did not come under attack over Dubai. The incident occurred over Saudi Arabia before the aircraft was brought under control and landed safely.

Finally, open-source investigator Tal Hagin found that the sounds of passengers screaming in the fake video were taken from an older Facebook video showing turbulence and repurposed in the fabricated report.

Taken together, these clues show that the viral video combines manipulated BBC footage, AI-generated audio, unrelated imagery and recycled audio to create a false account of the FlyDubai incident, as well as falsely implicate an Indian passenger and the pilot.