New Delhi: The National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU) has found that audio clips allegedly linking former Manipur chief minister Biren Singh to the 2023 ethnic violence in the state were manipulated and edited.
This information was placed before the Supreme Court Friday when a bench of justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva heard a Public Interest Litigation demanding a court-monitored probe into the audio recordings by a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
Based on these clips, the petitioner – Kuki Organisation For Human Rights Trust – has accused Singh of fueling insurgency and protecting those who looted arms during ethnic clashes in Manipur.
Though the court has not issued a formal notice in the matter, both the Centre and the state of Manipur have made an appearance in the matter through additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati.
The NFSU’s findings on the audio clips were strongly questioned by the petitioner whose counsel, Prashant Bhushan, challenged the credibility of the institution itself and vowed to expose it through an affidavit.
“I was refraining from filing it, but now I will file an affidavit on this institution,” he told the court, prompting Bhati to take objections to Bhushan’s tone. She urged the court to advise him to argue softly instead of raising his voice, and trying to browbeat her.
At the outset, Bhati referred to the six-page report and its findings that indicated the recordings contained multiple alterations.
The report was related to a two-hour long audio clip, which the petitioner provided to NFSU pursuant to SC’s April 2026 order. This was after the institute expressed its difficulty to verify a 48-minute audio clip provided earlier.
Handing over the report, Bhati urged the bench to dismiss the petition with costs, considering it was pending since 2024.
She said the “first-generation” copy of the whistleblower’s recording too had been altered due to which the NSFU was unable to carry out a reliable forensic verification.
“Lordship may see what they have done now. I spoke to the CFSL doctors and I told them to send me a letter. Even this (the two-hour-long audio clip) has 41 alterations. I am told that there are the same variations (as the earlier one)….it’s clearly manipulated,” she told the bench.
It was also pointed out that there are 23 gaps in the entire audio clip.
Upon reading the letter, justices Kumar and Sachdeva said they would now hear the two sides based on the recent report, saying they would be given an opportunity to address its contents.
Bhushan, however, vehemently opposed the report, saying Truth Lab had found “93 percent match” between the voices in the recordings.
“I’m in the face of a report given by a premium forensic lab in the country whose founder was Justice Venkatachaliah. That Truth Lab gave an unequivocal report that there is a 93 Percent match in the voices,” he told the bench.
However, the court preferred to give time to Bhushan to respond and refrained from making the NFSU report public, while allowing it to be verified by Truth Lab.
The SC had in August 2025 assigned the task to NFSU to verify the 48-minute audio clip’s genuineness and to find out whether the voice in the recording was that of Biren Singh.
Upon examination, NFSU said since the audio clip shared with it was a truncated part of a longer recording and edited version. Therefore, it said, it was not possible for the institute to give a conclusive finding on whether the clip was genuine and if the audio was that of Biren Singh.
The court shared a similar concern about the 48-minute clip and advised the petitioner to share the “original” version.
During a hearing early this year, the petitioner agreed to place on record the complete audio recording that was more than two-hour long. Thereafter, the court in April ordered the NFSU to undertake a fresh examination exercise to compare the audio in it with Singh’s voice samples.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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