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
Cricketer Virat Kohli vouched for death penalty of those involved in rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata.
Fact
Viral video shows Kohli speaking during the 2023 podcast.
An eight-second video allegedly showing India’s star cricketer Virat Kohli speaking about the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor at a Hospital in West Bengal, Kolkata, India, and saying that the rapists should be hanged, is going viral on TikTok.
The brutal rape and murder of a post-graduate trainee doctor at R G Kar Medical College in Kolkata, India, earlier this month has sparked outrage in the country and widespread protests.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @shiva_kandel_1997 posted a video showing cricketer Virat Koli speaking about the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata hospital. The video also carries a photo of a condolence message offered to the victim doctor. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Virat KoIi speaks for the justice of the victim doctor.” In the video Koli says, “What happened to the doctor was too bad. I want the rapists to be hanged so that any rapist would think a thousand times before committing such a crime.”
The video posted on August 21 has garnered 107k likes, 1679 users have shared and 2602 people 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 conducted reverse searches on them. A Google reverse search on a frame led us to an article, dated February 25, 2023, published on First Sportz online.
On checking the article, we found that the shirt worn by Kohli matched the frame from the viral video. The photo was captured while Kohli was speaking on the RCB Podcast Season 2 in February 2023.
Taking a clue from the article, we searched for the original video on YouTube and found the full episode of the podcast, dated February 25, 2023, posted on the YouTube channel of Royal Challengers Bengalaru. On checking the video, we found that the viral video resembled the full episode of RCB podcast.
Thus, our findings indicated that the viral clip was taken from the February 2023 RCB podcast.
We also checked the verified X (formerly Twitter) handle of Kohli and searched if he has made any comments or posted his reactions to the Kolkota rape and murder case. However, we didn’t find anything posted by Kohli regarding the incident.
Deep Fake Analysis Unit (DAU) of Misinformation Combat Alliance ( MCA) analysed this viral clip with the help of several detection tools and found many glaring indications that prove that the audio laid over the video was created with the help of Artificial Intelligence.
Conclusion
No, Virat Kohli has not spoken about the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata Hospital. The viral video is from a 2023 RCB podcast shared with a false audio of Kohli laid on top.
Result: Altered Video
Sources
First Sportz, Feb 25, 2023
Royal Challengers Bengalaru /YouTube, Feb 25, 2023
Virat Kohli/X (formerly twitter)
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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.
