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
Actor Rajesh Hamal announced to join politics to support Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah.
Fact
Viral video is created by using unrelated photos.
A video claiming that Nepali cine star Rajesh Hamal has announced to join politics to support incumbent mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Balendra Shah is going viral on TikTok.
TikTok user @ramesh.chaudhary3275 posted a video carrying photos of Nepali cine artist Rajesh Hamal and mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City Balen Shah. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Rajesh Hamal has announced to join politics to support mayor Balen Shah. Another text on the screen below Rajesh Hamal’s photo apparently showing him delivering a speech reads, “They [politicians] describe about Nepal’s poverty and drawbacks at international forums so that they can ask for some aid. And when they come back to Nepal they scream at the top of their voice before the people that they will make Nepal the most developed country in South Asia in 10 years. What else can be more nonsense than that?”
The video posted on October 3 has garnered 17.7k likes and 212 users have shared it and 688 people have commented until the time of publishing this article. The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.
Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker searched for the news reports to check about Rajesh Hamal’s decision to join politics by using both Nepali and English keywords. We found a recent article, dated September 9, 2024, published on ekantipur online which quoted Rajesh Hamal saying that his fans have been expecting him to join politics as they are disappointed with the current state of affairs. Adding that politics is the backbone of the country, Hamal, at a literature festival, said that people are imagining that politics would be good if people doing good in other fields join politics. However, he didn’t say anything about decision to join politics.
Further, we ran a search on YouTube for a Nepali key-phrase ‘Rajesh Hamal politics’ and the search led us to a post by YouTube channel named Hamrosambad on October 3, 2024, whose thumbnail resembled one of the two photos carried in the viral TikTok video.
On checking the 30-minute long footage, we found that Hamal was speaking at a literature festival and addressing the youth about politics. On listening to the entire video, we found that Hamal’s speech from 14.30-minute to 15.05-minute exactly matched the second text superimposed on the screen.
We found that a section of the video titled ‘Rajesh Hamal says the ground reality won’t change without people of integrity in politics’ matched the viral video.
On digging further, we found that the video was captured during an event titled ‘Rastriya Yuba Sansad” organised by Global Youth Parliament at Rastriya Nach Ghar in Kathmandu on October 1, 2024.
Thus, our findings showed that the viral video is made up by using unrelated images.
Conclusion
Nepali film star Rajesh Hamal has not announced to join politics. The viral video is misleading.
Result: False
Sources
ekantipur.com, Sept 9, 2024
Hamrosambad /YouTube, Oct 3, 2024
Onlinekhabar.com, Oct 1, 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.
