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
Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit has passed away.
Fact
Viral video is false.
A video allegedly showing the funeral of Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @amjad_996 posted a video showing several Bollywood personalities including Salman Khan attending a funeral.The video carries a photo of Salman Khan wiping his tears alongside a photo of Madhuri Dixit. Text superimposed on the video reads, “RIP. Madhuri Dixit passed away.” Hindi audio accompanying the video says, “Bollywood superstar of the 1990s Madhuri Dixit is no more in this world. All of you see big super stars of Bollywood are present at the funeral. Madhuri Dixit was the best actor and dancer. We can’t do anything about it, whoever comes to this world has to leave it one day. Whenever I see any funeral I remember the words of Sylvester Stallone about life and death…”
The video posted on January 3 has garnered 18.8k likes, 1768 users have shared it and 94 people have commented until the time of publishing this article.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker conducted a search on Google for news related to Madhuri Dixit’s passage by using relevant key-words. However, we didn’t find any relevant results.
We, then, split the video into several key frames and ran reverse searches on them. A Google search on a frame showing Salman Khan led us to a video, dated October 13, 2024, published on the YouTube channel named Showsaw. On checking the video, we found that the video at 0:36-minute resembled the second footage of the viral video. The video caption and description reads, “Salman Khan arrives at Lavati Hospital in Mumbai after the death of Baba Siddique, a senior NCP leader”.
Further, we found another video, dated October 13, 20024, published on the Facebook page of News18 Channel, resembling the third clip of the viral video. The clip showed Salman Khan leaving the residence of Baba Siddique after the latter’s demise.
We then checked the verified Facebook page of Madhuri Dixit and found that she has been regularly posting her activities.
Thus, our findings clearly indicated that Madhuri Dixit is alive, and if she had really died, it would definitely have made big news.
Conclusion
No, Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit has not passed away. The viral video actually shows Salman Khan among other Bollywood personalities arriving to pay their last respects to Baba Siddique in October 2024.
Result: False
Sources
Madhuri Dixit Nene /Facebook
Showsaw/YouTube, Oct 13, 2024
News18/Facebook, Oct 13, 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.
