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.
At a time when the newly formed Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) has emerged as a new phenomenon in Nepali politics, many unverified claims regarding the party’s chairman Rabi Lamichhane are being shared online. In this context, a video allegedly showing Rabi Lammichhane venting his anger at the people of Dadeldhura district, is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be false.
TV presenter turned politician Lamichhane was elected to the House of Representatives from Chitwan-2 with a huge margin in the general elections held on November 20. Nepali Congress President and Incumbent Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba won the election from Dadeldhuara, a far-western district with a single constituency, defeating his closest rival Sagar Dhakal by a margin of 12,432 votes. A young Oxford scholar trained as engineer, Dhakal, 31, was a popular face of this election. He decided to run for the election from Deuba’s home constituency after his heated brawl with the latter in a popular public debate programme back in 2017. Though a new wave of young candidates pulled off surprise wins in many urban constituencies, Dhakal couldn’t ride on the wave.
Against this backdrop, TikToker @panchabashyal posted a 30-second video showing Rabi Lamichhane passionately addressing a crowd. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Rabi Lamichhane venting his ire at the people of Dadeldhura.” The speech purported to have been delivered by Lamichhane is in Hindi.
The video shared on November 29 has garnered 109 likes, and five people have commented on it.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim made in the viral video, we took a keyframe from the video and ran a reverse search on google which threw up several results. On checking a video posted on the YouTube Channel named Rastriya Swatantra Party, Newschecker found the frames from the video matching the viral video.
In the video posted on November 17, Lamichhane can be heard issuing warnings against the attempts to use money to influence the elections ahead of the election silence period. “Be aware of the elements trying to influence the elections, let us all keep our mouths shut and close our pockets and bank, and strive for a free and fair elections,” Lamichhane can be heard saying.
We closely watched the video and noticed a logo of Sutra TV on the top right corner of the viral video. Taking the logo as a clue, we searched for the YouTube channel named Sutra TV and found a video of Rabi Lamichhane addressing a crowd in Chitwan. On watching the video, we found that the video frame from time-stamp 22.21-minute timestamp exactly matched the viral video.
Further, we listened to the audio of the viral video and found a clue that the Hindi voice-over somehow resembled Bollywood actor Nana Patekar. We searched for famous dialogue by Patekar on YouTube and found a video clip posted in a YouTube Channel named NH Studioz. On listening to the audio from a clip of 1994 Bollywood movie Krantiveer, we found that the audio from the 1.6-minute timestamp exactly matched the viral video. Thus, we found that a speech of Lamichhane ahead of the November 20 elections was falsely shared by using a Bollywood movie audio.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming to show Rastriya Swatantra Party chairman Rabi Lamichhane venting his ire at the people of Dadeldhura is false. The viral video actually shows Lamichhane delivering a speech during his election campaign by using an audio clip from a Bollywood movie.
Result: False
Sources
Sutra TV
Rastriya Swatantra Party
NH Studioz
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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.
