Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become essential today than ever before.
Claim
Bollywood Actor Akshay Kumar expressed his sympathies with Palestinian people.
Fact
2020 clip shows Akshay admitting the existence of drug abuse in Bollywood following the demise of Sushant Singh
At a time when Israel has been continuing its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, many celebrities have taken to social media to express their support for Palestine and Israel. Against this backdrop, a video allegedly showing Bollywood Actor Akshay Kumar sympathising with the people of Palestine has gone viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @akshaykumar_0.2 posted a video showing Akshaya Kumar speaking on camera with the text superimposed on the video reading, “I pray for Palestine.” In the video, Akshaya Kumar says, “What is happening to Palestinian people is not right. It is wrong.”
The video posted on October 16 has garnered 245k likes, 2993 users have shared it and 3513 people have commented on it until the time of publishing this article.The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker investigation found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check/Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker began by conducting reverse search on key frames from the viral video which threw up several results matching the viral video.
On checking a video published on the verified Instagram page of Akshaya Kumar, we found that the video frames exactly matched the viral video. In the video, dated October 3 2023, Akshay Kumar admits the existence of drug abuse in Bollywood and calls on the people not to put the label on everyone in the movie industry. He was speaking in response to controversies following the demise of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Further, we found another video, dated October 3, 2020, published on the YouTube channel of India TV whose frames from the 1.25-minute timestamp exactly matched the viral video. We can clearly see that Akshay’s gestures and lip-syncing exactly match the viral video. However, nowhere does Akshaya speak about Palestine or Israel. The video title reads that Akshaya Kumar opens up on Sushant and Drug use in Bollywood in the context of the death of Sushant Singh Rajput.
We found several media reports confirming that Akshay Kumar was actually speaking about the controversies surrounding the death of Sushant Singh. Thus, our findings clearly indicate that an old clip of Akshaya Kumar speaking about the controversies after the demise of Sushant Singh is manipulated to depict him expressing support to Palestinian people.
Conclusion
No, the viral video doesn’t show Akshaya Kumar expressing his sympathies with the Palestinian people. The 2020 clip shows Akshay speaking about the controversies following the demise of Bollywood Actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Result: False
Sources
Akshaya Kumar /Instagram, October 3, 2020
India TV/YouTube, October 3, 2020
Hindustan Times, October 3, 2020
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become essential today than ever before.
