#FactCheck-Old Maharashtra Video of Dancing Policemen Falsely Linked to West Bengal Election Results

Executive Summary

A picture circulating on social media allegedly shows Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani presenting a luxury car to India’s T20 team captain Suryakumar Yadav. The image is being widely shared with the claim that the Ambani family gifted the cricketer a luxury car in recognition of his outstanding performance. However, research conducted by the CyberPeace found the viral claim to be false. The research revealed that the image being circulated online is not authentic but generated using artificial intelligence (AI).

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Claim

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On February 8, 2025, a Facebook user shared the viral image claiming that Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani gifted a luxury car to Suryakumar Yadav following his brilliant innings. The post has been widely circulated across social media platforms. In another instance, a user shared a collage in which one image shows Suryakumar Yadav receiving an award, while another depicts him with Nita Ambani, further amplifying the claim.

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• https://www.facebook.com/61559815349585/posts/122207061746327178/?rdid=0MukeT6c7WK1uB8m# 
• https://archive.ph/wip/UH9Xh 

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Fact Check:

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Upon closely examining the viral image, certain visual inconsistencies raised suspicion that it might be AI-generated. To verify its authenticity, the image was analysed using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, which indicated a 99 percent probability that the image was AI-generated.

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In the next step of the research, the image was also analysed using another AI detection tool, Sightengine, which found a 98 percent likelihood that the image was created using artificial intelligence.

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Conclusion

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The research clearly establishes that the viral image claiming Mukesh Ambani and Nita Ambani gifted a luxury car to Suryakumar Yadav is misleading. The picture is not real and has been generated using AI.

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Introduction

India is operating on digital rails today. Even as UPI is set to hit over 130 billion transactions by 2025, it already makes up around 80% of retail payments flow by volume. That volume is really what it is all about: a single extra transaction is simply another attack surface, and fraud has correspondingly scaled up. FY 2024-25 alone saw an estimated 485 crore in losses to UPI-related fraud through 632,000 reported frauds.  The response from the RBI has not been a single rulebook but a layered and dynamic regulatory infrastructure that currently spans banks, NBFCs, payment aggregators, card networks, and, by extension, the fintechs that connect into all of these components. Knowing why the infrastructure is shaped the way it is and what actual enforcement looks like is far more crucial than having a checklist in mind. This write-up moves beyond summarising the rules to outlining the thinking behind them, the latest trends shaping the segment and the reality of an implementation roadmap.

Why Has RBI Cybersecurity Compliance Become Non-Negotiable?

Three forces are converging on regulated entities at once:

1. The threat surface has outgrown legacy controls: Core banking systems were never designed for an ecosystem of APIs, third-party payment gateways, and unregulated fintech partners sitting on top of them. Every integration is a potential entry point, and attackers know it.

2. Financial stability is now a cyber question, not just a credit question: a prolonged outage at a large payment system operator doesn't just hurt one bank's balance sheet; it can freeze retail payments for hundreds of millions of people. RBI treats this as systemic risk, which is why its post-2020 directions lean so heavily on resilience (the ability to keep operating through an attack) rather than just prevention.

3. Enforcement has escalated: The RBI's May 2025 single order penalised five different banks, including levying a 97.80 lakh penalty on ICICI Bank with one part attributable to its late reporting of a cybersecurity incident and another to a lapse in account alert systems; this demonstrates this rise in intensity. Remember, under Sections 46 and 47A of the Banking Regulation Act 1949, the RBI has the power to levy penalties irrespective of the occurrence of an actual breach if an individual fails to comply with procedures like not properly assessing vendor access or reporting incidents late or failing to update crisis plans or timely reports. Now this is a significant development, an issue even in the absence of a full-scale 'hack'.

The Regulatory Architecture: What Actually Applies to Whom

Rather than one framework, regulated entities are governed by several overlapping directions depending on their category:

• Banks: The original RBI Cyber Security Framework requires board-approved cybersecurity policies, 24x7 Security Operations Centres, and defined incident reporting timelines.
• NBFCs: NBFCs were initially governed under the Master Direction on IT Framework for NBFC Sector, which escalates accordingly as per size of asset – the framework underwent substantial change in shape with the RBI notifying Cybersecurity, Technology Risk, Resilience and Assurance Framework directions, 2026 for NBFCs, which lays specific obligations based on tier level (NBFC-Base Layer, Middle Layer, Upper Layer & Top Layer entities) on issues like MIS reporting, fraud analytics & impact of incident reporting. 
• PSOs: Non-bank Payment system Operators PSOs have been regulated under the Master Direction on Cyber Resilience and Digital Payment Security Controls, 2024 (July 2024). Card networks, payment aggregators, PPI issuers and other PSOs come under its umbrella, with staged compliance based on the volume/business size (large – NPCI, card networks and the largest PPI issuers will meet requirements on April 1, 2025; medium ones by April 1, 2026; and small ones by April 1, 2028).
• Other Bodies: IT Governance (on all regulated entities broadly) The Master Direction on Information Technology Governance, Risk, Controls and Assurance Practices, 2023, became effective on April 1, 2024, and has set basic benchmarks for information technology (IT) strategy committees, IT risk management processes & IT assurance functions.

Overall trends' information across all these is clear:  escalating tier requirements as per size and board-led controls are mandatory; a conscious acceptance that there will inevitably be data breaches in the future; and increasing emphasis on response and recovery.

Governance: Where RBI Compliance Actually Starts

A recurring theme across every RBI direction is that cybersecurity cannot be delegated entirely to the IT department. The Board of Directors is expected to own information security risk, with oversight typically delegated to a board subcommittee that meets at least quarterly. A board-approved information security policy, reviewed annually, must define the following:

• Roles and responsibilities across the Board, senior management, and the CISO
• Processes to identify, assess, monitor, and manage cyber risk
• Employee and stakeholder training and awareness programs

RBI's own 2022 thematic review of IT governance across 20 banks found unmanaged third-party vendor access, with vendors retaining privileged access to core systems long after a project ended at more than half the institutions reviewed. That kind of gap is a governance failure as much as a technical one: it happens because nobody owns the review cycle, not because the firewall is misconfigured.

Key Technical and Operational Controls

Once governance is in place, RBI's expectations translate into concrete control domains:

Infrastructure and access hardening: Network segmentation, endpoint protection, server hardening baselines, and multi-factor authentication for privileged access. Access reviews should be continuous or, at minimum, periodic, enforcing least privilege and separation of duties, not a one-time onboarding checkbox.

Vulnerability and patch management: Regular vulnerability scanning, risk-prioritised remediation, and a documented process for feeding vulnerability data into risk decisions, not just a scanner report sitting in an inbox.

Data security and localisation: Encryption at rest, in transit, and during processing; sound key management; data classification and masking; and adherence to the RBI's data localisation requirements for payment data.

Vendor and third-party risk: This has become one of the sharpest areas of regulatory focus. The 2024 PSO Master Directions explicitly require oversight of "unregulated entities" in the payment chain like payment gateways, third-party service providers, and vendors with due diligence, contractual security clauses, and ongoing monitoring baked in. For a bank or fintech, this means your compliance posture is only as strong as your weakest vendor's; the RBI increasingly holds the regulated entity accountable for its partners' failures, not just its own.

Security operations and incident response: 24x7 SOC capability, threat intelligence integration, and tested incident response plans via tabletop exercises and simulated attacks. A Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) drafted once and never rehearsed is, in practice, treated by RBI examiners as functionally absent.

Incident Reporting

This is where two separate regulatory clocks run in parallel, and conflating them is a common compliance mistake:

• RBI requirements: Regulated entities will normally have around 2-6 hours of detection to report most security incidents to the RBI with follow-up notifications as and when the nature of the incident unfolds.
• CERT-In's 6-hour rule: The CERT-In Directions dated April 2022 stipulate that every body corporate, which includes any bank, NBFC or payment aggregator, is obligated to report specified categories of cyber incidents to CERT-In within 6 hours of noticing them and not after fully confirming details at an additional 6 hours after noticing them. CERT-In directions also mandated that ICT system clocks are to be synced to NIC/NPL time servers, and system logs are to be maintained for a rolling 180 days within India.
• The Digital Personal Data Protection Act overlay: In the case of a data breach involving personal data, there will additionally be a 72-hour notification obligation from the data fiduciary to the Data Protection Board under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which runs in parallel to, and not in substitution of, the CERT-In time.

The practical consequences: If an SOP for incident response only maps one regime, then it would fail in an actual incident. We need a single intake process whereby multiple notification tracks are automatically triggered at the precise time an incident is detected, given that the inability to report "because we were still figuring it out" does not constitute an acceptable justification for a late notification under either regime.

Why Penetration Testing Sits at the Center of Compliance

RBI's VAPT (Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing) mandate isn't a box-ticking annual scan. It's meant to validate, under real attack conditions, whether the governance and technical controls described above actually hold up. Automated scanning finds known vulnerabilities; penetration testing, ideally combining automated coverage with manual, business-context-aware testing, finds the logic flaws, chained exploits, and privilege escalation paths that scanners miss and that attackers actually use.

For most regulated entities, a realistic testing cadence looks like:

1. Semi-annual vulnerability assessments across critical systems
2. Annual (at minimum) penetration testing of applications, networks, and infrastructure supporting payment and customer-data systems
3. Testing triggered by events before go-live, after major changes, and post-deployment.
4. Documented remediation cycles and rescans, with reports mapped directly to the relevant compliance clauses for audit purposes

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

RBI's enforcement history grounds the financial impact of enforcement actions. In addition to the May 2025 fines levied on ICICI, Axis, IDBI, Bank of Baroda and Bank of Maharashtra, the RBI's published Enforcement Guidelines differentiate three levels of severity; procedural breaches such as delayed policy review or late incident notifications usually warrant 10 lakh to 1 crore fines plus formal reprimands and remediation orders with deadlines. Recurring governance breaches go farther than fines, resulting in restrictions on business activities and more stringent supervisory reporting, with egregious breaches leading to inclusion under the RBI's Prompt Corrective Action regime. Penalty orders are also publicly available, and the resulting toll on customer trust, partner trust, and investor confidence often dwarfs the fines.

A Practical Implementation Roadmap

For an organisation building or maturing its RBI compliance programme, a sensible sequence looks like this:

1. Establish board-level ownership first: Form or formalise the Board IT/Risk sub-committee, appoint or empower a CISO with real authority, and get the information security policy formally approved, and this is the foundation every RBI examiner checks first.
2. Mapping: A mid-sized NBFC, a large payment aggregator, and a scheduled commercial bank face different, overlapping obligations. Get this scoping wrong and you'll either over-engineer or leave gaps.
3. Secure third-party access: Audit every vendor with system access, revoke stale privileges, and build vendor security clauses into contracts going forward, not retroactively.
4. Build one incident response SOP: Run one compiled playbook that satisfies RBI, Cert-In and DPDP.
5. Schedule and actually rehearse tabletop exercises: not just write a CCMP and file it away.
6. Institutionalise VAPT as a continuous, risk-triggered programme rather than an annual compliance event, and ensure reports are structured to map directly onto RBI's compliance clauses for audit readiness.
7. Track the regulatory calendar actively: 2024–2026 has brought new NBFC directions, PSO phase-ins, and ITG-RC&AP obligations in quick succession, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.

Conclusion

RBI's shift from perimeter-focused prevention to a risk-based, resilience-first model reflects a broader reality: in a digital payments ecosystem processing billions of transactions a month, breaches are not a hypothetical to plan around; they're an operational certainty to plan for. The frameworks discussed here, cyber resilience directions, IT governance mandates, CERT-In's reporting clock and the new NBFC cybersecurity directions aren't separate hurdles to clear individually. They're converging into a single expectation: that regulated entities can detect an incident quickly, contain it, recover fast, and prove with documentation, tested plans, and independent penetration test evidence that they were ready for it in the first place.

For banks, NBFCs, and fintechs operating in India today, that readiness is no longer just a regulatory requirement. It's the baseline cost of operating in the financial system at all.

References

• https://www.getastra.com/blog/compliance/rbi-cybersecurity-compliance-checklist/

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Sources

1. Astra Security — RBI Cybersecurity Compliance Checklist for Banks & NBFCs in 2026: https://www.getastra.com/blog/compliance/rbi-cybersecurity-compliance-checklist/ 
2. TaxGuru — RBI Issues NBFC Cybersecurity and Technology Risk Directions, 2026: https://taxguru.in/rbi/rbi-issues-nbfc-cybersecurity-technology-risk-directions-2026-governance-framework.html 
3. Mondaq — Cyber Resilience and Digital Payment Security Governance (Master Directions, 2024): https://www.mondaq.com/india/fin-tech/1527836/cyber-resilience-and-digital-payment-security-governance-a-step-towards-secured-payments-systems 
4. TaxGuru — Master Directions on Cyber Resilience & Digital Payment Security Controls for Non-bank PSOs: https://taxguru.in/rbi/master-directions-cyber-resilience-digital-payment-security-controls-non-bank-payment-system-operators.html 
5. CyberNX — Ultimate Guide on RBI Master Directions for Cyber Resilience: https://www.cybernx.com/rbi-master-directions-guide/ 
6. SIRI Law LLP — A Comprehensive Guide to India's CERT-In 6-Hour Cyber Incident Reporting Mandate: https://sirilawllp.com/a-comprehensive-guide-to-indias-cert-in-6-hour-cyber-incident-reporting-mandate/ 
7. CreativeCyber — CERT-In 6-Hour Incident Reporting SOP for Indian Banks & NBFCs: https://creativecyber.in/resources/cert-in-6-hour-incident-reporting/ 
8. BW Businessworld — RBI Slaps Penalties on ICICI, Axis and Three Others Over Compliance Failures (May 2025): https://www.businessworld.in/article/rbi-slaps-penalties-on-icici-axis-three-others-over-compliance-failures-555643 
9. FluxForce — RBI Cyber Framework: Banks' Requirements & Penalties: https://www.fluxforce.ai/regulations/rbi-cyber-security-framework-banks 
10. MYITMANAGER — RBI Cybersecurity Guidelines 2026: What Banks and NBFCs Must Do: https://myitmanager.in/rbi-cybersecurity-guidelines-2026-banks-nbfcs/

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Executive Summary:

The viral social media posts circulating several photos of Indian Army soldiers eating their lunch in the extremely hot weather near the border area in Barmer/ Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, have been detected as AI generated and proven to be false. The images contain various faults such as missing shadows, distorted hand positioning and misrepresentation of the Indian flag and soldiers body features. The various AI generated tools were also used to validate the same. Before sharing any pictures in social media, it is necessary to validate the originality to avoid misinformation.

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Claims:

The photographs of Indian Army soldiers having their lunch in extreme high temperatures at the border area near to the district of Barmer/Jaisalmer, Rajasthan have been circulated through social media.

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Fact Check:

Upon the study of the given images, it can be observed that the images have a lot of similar anomalies that are usually found in any AI generated image. The abnormalities are lack of accuracy in the body features of the soldiers, the national flag with the wrong combination of colors, the unusual size of spoon, and the absence of Army soldiers’ shadows.

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Additionally it is noticed that the flag on Indian soldiers’ shoulder appears wrong and it is not the traditional tricolor pattern. Another anomaly, soldiers with three arms, strengtheness the idea of the AI generated image. 

Furthermore, we used the HIVE AI image detection tool and it was found that each photo was generated using an Artificial Intelligence algorithm.

We also checked with another AI Image detection tool named Isitai, it was also found to be AI-generated.

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After thorough analysis, it was found that the claim made in each of the viral posts is misleading and fake, the recent viral images of Indian Army soldiers eating food on the border  in the extremely  hot afternoon of Badmer were generated using the AI Image creation tool.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the analysis of the viral photographs claiming to show Indian army soldiers having their lunch in scorching heat in Barmer, Rajasthan reveals many anomalies consistent with AI-generated images. The absence of shadows, distorted hand placement, irregular showing of the Indian flag, and the presence of an extra arm on a soldier, all point to the fact that  the images are artificially created. Therefore, the claim that this image captures real-life events is debunked, emphasizing the importance of analyzing and fact-checking before sharing in the era of common widespread digital misinformation.

• Claim: The photo shows Indian army soldiers having their lunch in extreme heat near the border area in Barmer/Jaisalmer, Rajasthan.
• Claimed on: X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, Facebook
• Fact Check: Fake & Misleading