#FactCheck -Old Chhattisgarh ACB Bribery Case Misrepresented as ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ Action in Viral Video

Introduction

Delhi is Delhi-ing these days — whether it's the protest, the monsoon weather, the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, metro disruptions, or just the general chaos of it all. Amid everything else, it's been over 30 days, starting from late June 2026, since the large public march organised in part by the group known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) converged near Parliament and on Jantar Mantar, and the city hasn't quite exhaled since. Like every large, fast-moving public event, it's come with a parallel flood online: photos, video clips, injury claims, and hot takes pouring in from participants, bystanders, and news outlets alike, all competing for your instagram scroll.

CyberPeace is a non-partisan digital trust and safety organisation, and what we do care about is the online information environment building up around the event — helping people spot misinformation and manipulated media, and encouraging a bit more caution before hitting "share" while rumours are moving faster than facts.

Delhi Police has already made a public appeal along similar lines, asking citizens against online spread of unverified rumours, noting that misinformation could make an already tense situation worse. This advisory builds on that, with some practical guidance for everyday citizens navigating the protest in light of social media.

Why This Matters Right Now

30 plus days in, the story has layers: the original hunger strike, the march itself, police action, viral clips, and now a second wave of commentary reacting to the reactions. Old footage resurfaces relabelled as "live." Numbers get inflated or deflated depending on who's sharing them. Screenshots go around stripped of context. The longer a protest runs, the murkier the timeline gets for anyone just scrolling past — which is exactly when misinformation finds the most room to spread.

The internet access was also restricted in parts of the city during the march, which has itself become a point of attention.

Given how much unverified information is already circulating, it's worth treating any single account of "what actually happened". The full picture will likely take time to emerge through credible reporting and scrutiny. 

Why This Moment Is Especially Prone to Misinformation

A few things are working together here to make mis-information spread faster than usual: Emotions are running high. Clashes, injuries, and confrontations naturally provoke strong reactions, and content that makes people angry or afraid tends to get shared quickly, with far less scrutiny than a calm, verified report would get.

There are information gaps. Reports of internet restrictions in parts of the city leave holes that get filled with speculation  or worse, old footage recycled and passed off as live updates.

The event is politically charged, which means competing narratives are synthetically being pushed from multiple directions, sometimes deliberately, making it harder to find neutral ground.

There's simply a huge volume of content. Thousands of clips and photos are being posted from one event, which makes it easy for unrelated or out-of-context material to slip in alongside the real thing. And then there's satire. Part of this movement has roots in political satire, so parody posts and meme accounts can easily be mistaken for genuine news if they're shared without context.

Common Types of Misleading Content to Watch For

A few patterns tend to show up again and again during events like this:

1. Old footage getting relabelled -  Photos or videos from a completely different protest, city, or even country, re-shared with a caption claiming it's from this event.
2. Clips taken out of context - A short moment, like a scuffle, shown without what happened right before or after it, changing how it reads.
3. Doctored images - Photos edited to add, remove, or exaggerate people, banners, injuries, or crowd size.
4. Fake official statements - Screenshots or graphics designed to look like they came from Delhi Police or a government department, but never actually issued.
5. Made-up casualty numbers - Figures shared with no real source, often vaguely attributed to "eyewitnesses."
6. Impersonation accounts - Handles designed to look like an official police or organiser account, sometimes just one letter off from the real one.
7. AI-generated visuals - Fully or partly synthetic images and videos showing scenes or crowds that never actually happened.
8. Rumours about shutdowns - Unverified claims about internet blackouts, road closures, or metro shutdowns that may be old, exaggerated, or simply untrue.

What Citizens Should Do:

• Pause before you forward. If a clip or claim makes you feel an instant, strong reaction, that's often the moment to slow down, not speed up.
• Check the timestamp and source. A five-day-old protest generates a lot of recycled footage. Reverse image/video search before assuming something is "breaking."
• Cross-check with more than one outlet. If only one account or page is reporting something dramatic, wait for corroboration.
• Be wary of numbers without sources. Injury counts, crowd sizes, and arrest figures are easy to exaggerate in either direction.
• Don't share unverified visuals of injuries or violence. Beyond accuracy concerns, this can also cause real harm to the people shown.
• When in doubt, don't repost — verify first, or simply sit it out.

How to Check a Claim Before You Share It:

A checklist goes a long way here:

1. Pause for a second. Content built to provoke a strong reaction is often designed to get past your defenses before you think twice. Just slowing down is itself protective.
2. Ask where it actually came from. Is this from a named journalist or outlet you can verify, or an anonymous forward with no clear origin? Messages that have clearly been passed around many times deserve extra suspicion.
3. Look for more than one source. If something significant is genuinely true, you'll usually find several independent, reputable outlets reporting it not just one channel or account.
4. Check the date and place. A quick reverse image or video search can tell you if a photo or clip has shown up online before, and what it was originally about.
5. Wait for official confirmation. For anything involving police action, injuries, or arrests, check verified accounts like Delhi Police, PIB, established news wires before treating a claim as settled fact.
6. Be suspicious of absolute language. Words like "confirmed," "breaking," or "exposed," used without naming any actual source, are a classic misinformation tell.
7. Look at the account, not just the post. New accounts with no history, or ones that only ever post about this one topic, deserve a second look.
8. Notice when something feels too satisfying. If a claim perfectly confirms what you already believed, that's exactly when you should slow down and check it; it's the content you're least likely to question on your own.

Reliable Fact-Checking Platforms and AI Detection Tools:

These resources can help you check specific claims, images, or videos:

1. For fact-checking: PIB Fact Check (factcheck.pib.gov.in) for anything involving government statements or orders; Alt News (altnews.in) and BOOM Live (boomlive.in), two independent Indian outlets that regularly cover protest- and politics-related claims.
2. For reverse image and video searches: Google Images, Google Lens, and TinEye can show you where a photo first appeared and in what context. InVID-WeVerify is a free browser plugin built for journalists that breaks videos into keyframes and lets you reverse-search individual frames.
3. For AI and synthetic media detection: Hive Moderation and Sensity AI offer public tools for checking images and video. Deepware Scanner focuses specifically on deepfake video. And most major platforms like Meta, YouTube, X are now labeling some AI-generated content automatically, though the absence of a label doesn't mean something's real.
4. A few terms worth knowing: A cheapfake is misleading media made with simple editing, cropping, slowing down, re-captioning rather than AI. These are still far more common than actual AI deepfakes. A deepfake is synthetic audio, video, or image content made with AI to convincingly show someone saying or doing something they didn't. Synthetic media is the broader umbrella term for any AI-generated content, whether or not it's being used to deceive.

Reporting Mechanism ~ If You Come Across Suspected Misinformation

Don't share it further, even to mock or correct it  any engagement can boost its reach. Check it against the fact-checking tools above before deciding what you think is true. Report it directly on the platform. If it falls  under the category of ‘Unlawful Content’ as per IT Rules, you can reach out to the grievance officer of the platform for removal of such content.

If it involves a government statement or order, send it to PIB Fact Check. If it looks like incitement, impersonation, extortion, or another cybercrime, report it to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (cybercrime.gov.in) or call 1930. 

Further Steps & helplines

1. To file a cybercrime complaint: National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal - 1930 or cybercrime.gov.in 
2. To flag a fake government-related claim: PIB Fact Check - factcheck.pib.gov.in
3. For an on-ground emergency: dial 100 / 112 
4. CyberPeace Helpline: +91 9570000066 or helpline@cyberpeace.net
5. For fact check and debunking of any suspicious viral information, you can reach out to cyberpeace at helpline@cyberpeace.net
6. If this advisory feels useful, consider sharing it in family WhatsApp groups, community networks, or student and youth organisations as it helps slow the spread of unverified content when more people are thinking about it.

CyberPeace's Message to Citizens

Being first to share something isn't the same as being right. In moments like this, the most useful thing any of us can do is slow down, verify before sharing, be a little suspicious of content that confirms exactly what we already believed, and trust named, accountable sources over anonymous forwards. Misinformation during civic unrest doesn't just mislead people; it can raise tensions, put individuals at risk, and chip away at trust in both the media and the institutions meant to maintain public order.Our goal is simply to help people navigate the information around it a little more safely and critically.

Conclusion

Protests and public unrest always generate a flood of information, and not all of it will be accurate. What keeps that information environment healthy isn't any single authority or platform, it's the everyday habits of the people deciding, one post at a time, whether to check something or just pass it along.  Delhi's news cycle will keep moving, and this advisory isn't asking anyone to disengage from it. It's just a nudge to stay a little more careful with what you believe and what you pass on in this social media age. Pause. Verify. Scroll healthy. Stay CyberPeaceful.

References

1. https://rajkaran.in/delhi-police-urges-calm-amid-cjp-protest-warns-against-rumours-as-clashes-erupt-during-chalo-sansad-march
2. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0kkSCYrjRGc
3. https://factcheck.pib.gov.in/
4. https://www.altnews.in/
5. https://www.boomlive.in/
6. https://www.vishvasnews.com/
7. https://www.factcrescendo.com/
8. https://cybercrime.gov.in/

Contributors

1. Neeraj Soni, Sr. Research Analyst, Policy & Advocacy, CyberPeace
2. Ritika Goswami, Intern - Policy & Advocacy, CyberPeace

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Introduction

DDoS – Distributed Denial of Service Attack is one of the cyber-attacks which has been evolving at the fastest pace,  the new technologies have created a blanket of vulnerability for the victim which allows the cyber criminals to stay under the radar and keep launching small scale high intensity cyber attacks. A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of Internet traffic. DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilizing multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic. Exploited machines can include computers and other networked resources such as IoT devices. From a high level, a DDoS attack is like an unexpected traffic jam clogging up the highway, preventing regular traffic from arriving at its destination.

Op Power Off

In a recent Operation by Law enforcement agencies known as Op Power Off, LEAs from United Kingdom, United States of America, Netherlands, Poland, and Germany joined hands to target the cybergroups committing such large-scale attacks which can paralyse the Internet become inaccessible for a large faction of netizens. The services collectively seized were by far the most popular DDoS booter services on the market, receiving top billing on search engines. One such service taken down had been used to carry out over 30 million attacks. As part of this action, seven administrators have been arrested so far in the United States and the United Kingdom, with further actions planned against the users of these illegal services.  International police cooperation was central to the success of this operation as the administrators, users, critical infrastructure, and victims were scattered across the world. Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre coordinated the activities in Europe through its Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT).

Participating Authorities

• United States: US Department of Justice (US DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• United Kingdom: National Crime Agency (NCA)
• The Netherlands: National High Tech Crime Unit Landelijke Eenheid, Cybercrime team Midden-Nederland, Cybercrime team Noord-Holland and Cybercrime team Den Haag
• Germany: Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), Hanover Police Department (Polizeidirektion Hannover), Public Prosecutor’s Office Verden (Staatsanwaltschaft Verden)
• Poland: National Police Cybercrime Bureau (Biuro do Walki z Cyber-przestępczością)

Issue related to DDoS Attacks

DDoS booter services have effectively lowered the entry barrier into cybercrime: for a fee as low as EUR 10, any low-skilled individual can launch DDoS attacks with the click of a button, knocking offline whole websites and networks by barraging them with traffic.  The damage they can do to victims can be considerable, crippling businesses financially and depriving people of essential services offered by banks, government institutions, and police forces. Emboldened by perceived anonymity, many young IT enthusiasts get involved in this seemingly low-level crime, unaware of the consequences that such online activities can carry. The influence of toolkits available on the dark net has made it easier for criminals to commit such crimes and at times even get away with it as well.

‍Recent examples of DDoS Attacks

• In February 2020, Amazon Web Services (AWS) suffered a DDoS attack sophisticated enough to keep its incident response teams occupied for several days also affecting customers worldwide.
• In February 2021, the EXMO Cryptocurrency exchange fell victim to a DDoS attack that rendered the organization inoperable for almost five hours.
• Recently, Australia experienced a significant, sustained, state-sponsored DDoS attack.
• Belgium also became a victim of a DDoS attack that targeted the country’s parliament, police services, and universities.

DDoS vs. DoS Attacks: What’s the Difference?

It’s important to avoid confusing a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack with a DoS (denial of service) attack. Although only one word separates the two, these attacks vary significantly in nature.

• Strictly defined, a typical DDoS attack manipulates many distributed network devices between the attacker and the victim into waging an unwitting attack, exploiting legitimate behavior.
• A traditional DoS attack doesn’t use multiple, distributed devices, nor does it focus on devices between the attacker and the organization. These attacks also tend not to use multiple internet devices.

Conclusion

In this era of cyberspace, it is of paramount importance to maintain digital safety and security equivalent to physical safety, the cybercriminals will not stop at anything and can stoop to any level to target netizens and critical infrastructures in order to commit ransomware and malware attacks. As we can see DDoS-ing is taken seriously by law enforcement, at all levels of users, and are on the radar of law enforcement, be it a gamer booting out the competition out of a video game, or a high-level hacker carrying out DDoS attacks against commercial targets for financial gain.

WhatsApp messages masquerading as an offer from Maruti Suzuki with links luring unsuspecting users with the promise of Maruti Suzuki 40th Anniversary Celebration presents, have been making the rounds on the app. If you receive such messages try to stay away from it, as it can be a scam.

The Research Wing of CyberPeace Foundation along with Autobot Infosec Private Limited have conducted a study based on a WhatsApp message that contained a link pretending to be a free gift offer from Maruti Suzuki which asks users to participate in a survey in order to get a chance to win a Maruti Baleno Sigma MT car.

Warning SignsThe campaign pretends to be an offer from Maruti Suzuki but is hosted on a third party domain instead of the official Maruti Suzuki website which makes it more suspicious.

The domain names associated with the campaign have been registered in very recent times.

Multiple redirections have been noticed between the links.

No reputed site would ask its users to share the campaign on WhatsApp.

The prize is kept really attractive to lure the laymen.

Grammatical mistakes have been noticed.

A congratulations message appears on the landing page with an attractive photo of Maruti Suzuki cars that asks users to participate in a quick survey in order to get a “Maruti Suzuki BALENO Sigma MT”. Also, the bottom of the page seems to appear like a comment section with public comments establishing the truthfulness of the offer.

The survey starts with some basic questions like Do you know Maruti Suzuki?, How old are you?, How do you think of Maruti Suzuki?, Are you male or female? Etc. Once the user answers the questions a “congratulatory message” is displayed.

On clicking the OK button users are given three attempts to win the prize. After completing all the attempts a message pops up that the user has won “Maruti Suzuki BALENO Sigma MT”. It then prompts the user to share the message on WhatsApp.

Strangely enough the user has to keep clicking the WhatsApp button until the progress bar completes. After clicking on the green ‘WhatsApp’ button multiple times it shows a section where an instruction has been given to complete registration in order to get the prize.

After clicking on the green ‘Complete registration’ button, it redirects the user to multiple advertisements web pages varying each time the user clicks on the button.

During the analysis the research team found a javascript code called hm.js was being executed in the background from the host hm[.]baidu[.]com which is a subdomain of Baidu and is used for Baidu Analytics, also known as Baidu Tongji. The important part is that Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services, products and artificial intelligence, headquartered in Beijing’s Haidian district, China.To read the full report, please click (https://www.cyberpeace.org/CyberPeace/Repository/20210828Research-report-on-Maruti-Suzuki-40th-Anniversary-Celebration-free-gift-scam.pdf) here:

Conclusive Summary

1. The whole research activity was performed in a secured sandbox environment where the WhatsApp application was not installed. If any user opens the link from a device like smartphones where the WhatsApp application is installed, the sharing features on the site will open the Whatsapp application on the device to share the link.

2. The campaign collects browser and system information from the users.

3. Most of the domain names associated with the campaign have the registrant country as China.

4. Cybercriminals used Cloudflare technologies to mask the real IP addresses of the front-end domain names used in this Maruti Suzuki 40th Anniversary Celebration free gift campaign. But during the phases of investigation, the research team has identified a domain name that was requested in the background and has been traced as belonging to China.

CyberPeace Advisory

1. CyberPeace Foundation and Autobot Infosec recommend that people should avoid opening such messages sent via social platforms.

2. If at all, the user gets into this trap, it could lead to whole system compromise such as access to the microphone, Camera, Text Messages, Contacts, Pictures, Videos, Banking Applications, etc as well as financial losses.

3. Do not share confidential details like login credentials, banking information with such a type of scam.

4. Do not share or forward fake messages containing links without proper verification.

5. There is a need for International Cyber Cooperation between countries to bust the cybercriminal gangs running the fraud campaigns affecting individuals and organizations, to make Cyberspace resilient and peaceful.

Source: https://www.business-standard.com//content/press-releases-ani/cyber-criminals-target-internet-users-with-maruti-suzuki-40th-anniversary-celebration-free-gift-scam-121083101204_1.html