Govt not seeking donations for Indian Army, social media claims 'fake'

A social media post is falsely claiming that a bank account will receive public donations for the Indian Army's modernisation, the government's fact-check unit has said.
Viral claim
A widely circulated WhatsApp message and social media posts named the account as 'Indian Army Modernisation Fund' and gave bank account details for donations.
PIB's fact-check clears the air
The fact-check unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on Tuesday denied the existence of any such government bank account. 'A message claims that the Central Government has opened a bank account for Army modernisation and is seeking donations. This claim is fake. No such account has been opened by the Government of India,' PIB said in its official post on X.
PIB urged citizens to rely on official channels before forwarding such unverified information.
What should citizens do?
Avoid forwarding unverified messages. Always check facts with official sources like PIB or respective ministry websites.
Do not transfer money to bank accounts shared via social media forwards, unless verified through government websites.
Report suspicious posts on platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, and X to prevent further spread.
Defence funding
India's defence modernisation is a structured and budget-driven process. Every year, the government allocates funds to the Ministry of Defence through the Union Budget. These funds cover the capital expenditure needed for modern equipment, technology upgrades, and infrastructure.
The government has not created any separate donation account for army modernisation. Citizens are advised to stay alert and not fall for misinformation circulating on social platforms.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Time of India

2 hours ago

• Time of India

Maharashtra man, 83, loses Rs 1.2 crore to fake stock trading portal

Representative Image MUMBAI: An 83-year-old retiree from Dadar lost Rs 1.2 crore to a fake online stock trading platform that he was led to believe was linked to a reputable private financial institution, reports Ahmed Ali. He was led to believe he had made profits of Rs 15.4 crore. The complainant was targeted on May 2 after he clicked on an advertisement online, which led him to a WhatsApp group that purported to offer stock market investment tips. The group had 92 members, many of whom turned out to be fraudsters. Lured by promises of high returns, he made investments of Rs 1.2 crore in all in weeks. Cyber police's central division has lodged an FIR and is tracing the IP addresses of the fraudsters, gathering call records, and tracking digital and money trails. No arrest has been made yet.

Hindustan Times

3 hours ago

• Hindustan Times

Delhi: 5 men held for running fake degree racket

Over 5,500 fake degrees of MBA, BAMS, and a dozen education call centres or counselling centres in Delhi, Noida and Rajasthan; names of over 20 universities used — a group of five men allegedly ran a fake degree racket for two years by targeting young men and women who were desperately looking for jobs and needed degrees from known universities. Investigators said the accused are owners/directors of more than 25 coaching centres and counselling centres. (Representational image) On Friday, the Delhi Police Crime Branch said they busted a fake degree racket and arrested five men in connection with the case with hundreds of fake degrees, certificates, devices and other evidence. Investigators said the accused are owners/directors of more than 25 coaching centres and counselling centres where they lured students by saying they would provide them 'degree at the earliest' and then would offer them a fake degree for ₹ 1-1.5 lakhs. A team led by ACP Ramesh Lamba received a tip that a group of coaching and counselling centres in Delhi and NCR are issuing fake degrees after taking hefty amount from students. 'We found involvement of coaching centre owners. They gave backdated fake degrees. The amount dependent on the degree. For BAMS, and MBA, the amount was more. For BA, MA, it was around ₹ 80,000 to ₹ 1 lakh' said an officer. Police said that on June 6 they raided the Paramhands Vidyapeeth centre at Netaji Subhash place and arrested its owner Vicky Harjani with over 75 forged degrees. Special Commissioner of Police (Crime) Devendra Srivastava said the accused and his associates have education counselling centres and call centres in Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad and Rajasthan. He said 'They used names of universities in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tamil Nadu.' Police said that after Harjani's arrests and interrogation, further raids were conducted in Delhi to identify and catch his aides. Police said four other men- Vivek Gupta, Satbir Singh, Narayan Jee and Avnish Kansal. 'We recovered a total of 275 forged degree certificates and other marksheets. We also seized over 20 mobile phones and six laptops. The forensic analysis of the devices revealed an additional 5500 fake degrees and mark sheets for programs such as B.A., BAMS, MBA, and M.A. These documents originated from multiple universities across several states' said Srivastava. During interrogation, police said they found the accused promoted their services on WhatsApp, Telegram and Facebook groups to students across India. 'Students were lured with promises of admission into recognized UGC and postgraduate courses — often with the added offer of backdated documents. Once convinced, the students submitted their personal and academic details, which were passed along to other members of the network. These members then generated professional-looking forged documents resembling those from legitimate universities' added Srivasatava. Police said Harjani ran two institutes in NSP and Rohini and employed telecallers to target students. His associate, Gupta, operated around seven counselling centres in Noida. Singh ran a coaching centre in Faridabad. Jee works from Bihar and was trying to set up a business in Delhi. Kansal is involved in two previous cases in Rajasthan where he cheated students and offered them fake degrees.

Time of India

3 hours ago

• Time of India

Haves' guide to the lives of have-yachts

Great wealth brings great isolation, and a siege mentality The most expensive car is worth only around $30mn and the most expensive watch, $55mn. If you're a billionaire, neither will make you stand out in a 'crowd' of 3,000-plus other billionaires, collectively worth over $16tn. But stand out you must, because 'esteem' or 'status' is the fourth rung of the human hierarchy of needs, as psychologist Abraham Maslow declared 82 years ago. You could buy a mansion, but the costliest on the market is worth some $300mn. On a good day, Elon Musk makes twice as much. Yachts are a better bet. The costliest is rumoured worth $4.8bn – just shy of Trump's net worth – and even relatively modest ones, like Jeff Bezos' $500mn 'Koru', cost many thousands of dollars per hour to maintain. There's no return on investment here, only loss, and if you're brave enough to bleed dollars without noticing, sociologists will now place you above the 'haves' as a 'have-yacht'. In his new book The Haves and Have-Yachts, New Yorker writer Evan Osnos dwells on this super-wealthy class and its quirks. In 2022, he'd written an article – The Floating World – focused on owners of 'gigayachts', that is yachts longer than 295ft, which already numbered around 100 then. But the book, which is a collection of his New Yorker essays on the super-wealthy – hence subtitled Dispatches on the Ultrarich – explores their attitudes, illustrated by actions. While Musk, possibly the wealthiest man in history, talks about settling Mars, other ultrarich have been making D-Day plans for Earth. Osnos writes about Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman, who got eye surgery done at 33 to improve his odds of surviving a disaster. Antonio Garcia Martinez, who used to be product manager at Facebook, bought five acres of woods on an island, and installed generators and solar panels there. What raised eyebrows, though, was his decision to bring thousands of rounds of ammunition. 'I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now,' he told Osnos. This survivalist streak also drives yacht-buying, says Osnos. Billionaire Peter Thiel, whose name crops up regularly in connection with America's rightward swing, has been known to fund the Seasteading Institute, whose mission is to 'enable floating societies which will allow the next generation of pioneers to test new ideas for govt'. Their website mentions 'building startup communities that float on the ocean with any measure of political autonomy.' Read together, 'new ideas for government' and 'political autonomy' suggest a real estate analogue of cryptocurrency. One of Osnos' essays, 'Ghost in the Machine', offers a peek inside the money-making empires of tech moguls. For example, when Facebook Live faced the problem of livestreamed suicides, its chief technology officer sent an internal memo: 'Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is de facto good.' To ordinary mortals, who satisfy Maslow's fourth level of needs with a new bag or a pair of shoes, these ideas and attitudes may be troubling, but it's important to be acquainted with them, to understand the forces shaping our world. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.