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 more essential today than ever before.
Claim
KMC deputy mayor Sunita Dangol extended support to Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane.
Fact
No, a viral video shows KMC deputy mayor speaking during the inauguration of a traffic awareness campaign in Kathmandu.
A video claiming that Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) deputy mayor Sunita Dangol has expressed her firm support to Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane amidst calls for his resignation, is going viral on TikTok.
At a time when the main opposition party Nepali Congress has been obstructing parliamentary proceedings demanding a parliamentary probe committee to investigate Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane for his alleged role in misappropriating funds of a cooperative funds, Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) spokesperson Gyanendra Shahi, among other party leaders, have demanded resignation of Home Minister Lamichhane over the use of excessive force by the police during the party’s demonstration in Kathmandu.
Against this backdrop,TikTok user @kapil_brother posted a video showing Deputy Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Sunita Dangol speaking. The video shows Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane among other attendees of the programme. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Sunita Dangol stood as a pillar in support of Rabi Lamichhane. Sunita expressed her firm support to Rabi Lamichhane telling him not to worry just because of Gyanendra Shahi [spokesperson of Rastriya Prajatantra Party].” In the audio accompanying the video, Deputy Mayor Dangol says, “Honourable Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane, Home Secretary, IGP Sir, Chief District Officer, office bearers sitting on the stage, and the persons representing various organisations.”
The video posted on April 14 has garnered 5456 likes, 38 users have shared it and 160 users have commented until the last count.
The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker split the video into several key-frames and ran reverse searches on them. The search led us to an article, dated April 14, 2023, published on Farakdhar online. We found that an image of Dangol carried in the article resembled a frame from the viral video. The article reported about the speech delivered by deputy mayor Dangol during the inauguration of ‘Traffic awareness special campaign -2081’.
Taking a clue from the article, we conducted a search on YouTube by using relevant keywords and found several videos depicting the speech of deputy mayor Dangol during the inauguration of a traffic awareness campaign in Kathmandu. On checking a video published on a YouTube channel named Nagarik Khabar, we found that the viral video showed Dangol speaking about the importance of amending the traffic rules and how things are gradually improving over the years.
The video frames somewhat matched the viral video, but we didn’t find the clip exactly matching the speech of the deputy mayor.
Further, we ran a Google search by using relevant keywords and found a video of the traffic awareness campaign inauguration programme published on the Facebook page named Earth News. On checking the video thoroughly, we found that the audio of deputy mayor from 37.06-minute onwards exactly matched the viral clip.
However, we didn’t find any video clip of news about KMC deputy mayor Sunita Dangol expressing her support to Home Minister Lamichhane in the context of Rastriya Prajatantra Party demanding his resignation.
Thus, our findings clearly showed that the viral video falsely linked the speech of Kathmandu deputy mayor Sunita Dangol to Rabi Lamichhane.
Conclusion
No, Kathmandu deputy mayor Sunita Dangol didn’t speak in support of Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane. The viral video is actually clipped from a speech by Dangol during the inauguration programme of ‘Traffic awareness campaign-2081’ where the Home Minister was the chief guest.
Result: False
Sources
Kathmandu Post Online, April 10, 2024
Farakdhar Online, April 14, 2024
Nagarik Khabar /YouTube, April 14, 2024
Earth News /Facebook , April 14, 2024
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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 more essential today than ever before.
