A six-second social media clip showing a man giving alcohol to a tiger and casually petting the big cat on an empty street has been “wildly” shared and exposed as a fake generated entirely by artificial intelligence (AI).
As this deceptive video went viral with false claims of a stray tiger from the Penchi Tiger Reserve, the Nagpur Rural Police issued a legal notice to the Mumbai resident who was running the social media account that posted the video.
The video was falsely claimed by many users to be from Madhya Pradesh, and the post identified the man as a 52-year-old drunk worker named Raju Patel, who claimed he mistook a stray tiger at Pench Tiger Reserve for a big cat while returning from a card game.
The fabricated story further claimed that the villagers were terrified and later forest officials tranquilized the animal.
This entire sensational story, which social media users have called both “brave” and “crazy”, is completely fabricated, neither the tiger nor the man in the video are real, and the incident never happened.
The video came to the attention of the Nagpur Rural Police as it was fake and had misleading links with the Pench Tiger Reserve in Nagpur district.
Police authorities quickly determined that the reel that appeared from the Instagram account “aikalaakari” on October 30, 2025 was generated by AI.
“This reel conveys the wrong message and has the potential to tarnish the image of the tiger reserve,” police said, expressing concern over misinformation that the reel could mislead tourists, impact tourism and present a false and dangerous view of behavior when interacting with wild animals.
Nagpur Rural Superintendent of Police Dr Harsh Poddar and Additional SP Anil Maske have issued a notice under Section 68 of the Bharatiya Janata Party Act to the Instagram account owner, a resident of Mumbai, officials said.
The video has since been deleted from Instagram.
Nagpur Rural Police has appealed to citizens to stop sharing fake content and warned of action against those creating reels defaming wildlife sanctuaries and spreading misinformation.
