A clip showing News18 managing editor Amish Devgan sitting with Home Minister Amit Shah and holding his shoe with both hands to help him pick up his leg is being widely shared on social media with snide remarks about the state of journalism in India.
X user Dr Aniruddha Malpani, MD (@malpani) shared the above-mentioned clip on October 26, sarcastically remarking that Devgan was the “role model of Indian journalism”. The post had over a million views and was reposted over 1,000 times at the time of writing this. (Archive)
The role model of Indian journalism ! pic.twitter.com/51daIsNutH
— Dr Aniruddha Malpani, MD (@malpani) October 26, 2025
An Instagram page, @thepolity_hub, also shared the same video with a caption in Hindi that translates to, “Amit Shah has made Amish Devgan sit on the tip of his shoe”.
View this post on Instagram
Several other users shared the same video, mocking the state of Indian media. Below are a few instances.
Fact Check
To verify the authenticity of this video, we broke down the clip into several keyframes and ran a reverse image search on a few of them. This led us to a YouTube video from May 23, 2024 on the News18 MP Chhattisgarh channel, where Devgan interviewed Amit Shah. At the time, Shah was campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
During the course of the interview, Devgan spent the day with Shah, following his poll campaigns in Odisha and West Bengal, and travelled with him in the same helicopter. However, at no point did the scene that appears in the viral clip appear in the full-length video.
We also found a post on Amish Devgan’s Instagram page from August 25, 2024, where he shared an image with Shah inside the helicopter. This image is the same one that appears in the first keyframe of the viral clip.
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Below is a comparison.
Based on this and the fact that the original interview did not have any such thing, led us to think the viral clip may have been generated using AI by feeding the above image with prompts.
On October 28, Amish Devgan also clarified on X that the viral clip was AI-generated and that he would take legal action.
Important Update:
I want to address the recent circulation of fake AI-generated videos targeting me. I assure everyone that I take these malicious actions seriously.
I will be taking strict legal action against those responsible and filing a criminal complaint with appropriate…— Amish Devgan (@AMISHDEVGAN) October 28, 2025
Thus, the viral clip showing the News18 anchor holding Amit Shah’s shoe is not a genuine video and likely generated using artificial intelligence.
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