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
Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli went to Pokhara and danced after the arrest of Rabi Lamichhane.
Fact
Viral video shows Maoists Chairman Dahal and Gandaki Province CM Pandey dancing during the declaration of Pokhara as Nepal’s tourism capital.
A video allegedly showing Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli dancing to the tune of Deusi after the arrest of Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) Chairman Rabi Lamichhane is going viral on TikTok.
RSP Chair and former Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane was arrested on Friday evening and taken to Pokhara on the same night after a complaint was lodged against him for allegedly misusing funds from the Suryadarshan Cooperative in Pokhara. He is also being investigated for organised crime.
Against this backdrop, TikTok user @bhanu1789 posted a video showing a person looking like Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Text superimposed on the video reads, “KP Sharma Oli went to Pokhara and danced to the tune of Deusi music after Rabi Lamichhane was arrested and taken to Pokhara.” A Deusi tune is played in the background. Deusi is a culture of singing and dancing during the Deepawali or Tihar festival.
The video posted on October 19 has garnered 444 likes, 111 people have commented and 85 users have shared it until the last count.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker split the video into several key-frames and ran reverse searches on them. A Google reverse search on a frame from the viral video led us to an article, dated March 17, 2024, published on Epardafas online.
On checking the article, we found a photo of CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who was the prime minister at the time, dancing along with the Chief Minister of Gandaki Province Surendra Raj Pandey and Mayor of Pokhara Metropolitan City Dhanraj Acharya. They were dancing during the official declaration of Pokhara as Nepal’s tourism capital.
We found a video embedded in the article. The clip matching the viral video was posted by Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Chen Song on his X (formerly Twitter handle).
Further, we also found a video, dated March 18, 2024, posted on an Instagram account named ‘No Next Question’. The video exactly matched the viral video. The video caption reads, “The video shows Prime Minister Prachanda, Chief Minister of Gandaki Province Surendra Pandey, and Mayor of Pokhara Metropolis Dhanraj Acharya dancing during Prakash Suput’s live concert at the announcement ceremony of Pokhara as the tourism capital.”
We also found another video, dated March 17, 2024, posted on the YouTube channel of Setopati, showing Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Surendra Pandey dancing.
Thus, our findings clearly indicated that the viral video showed an old video of former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Gandaki Province Chief Minister Surendra Pandey, who is purported to be KP Sharma Oli in the viral video.
Conclusion
No, the viral video doesn’t show Prime Minister and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli dancing after the arrest of Rabi Lamichhane. The viral video actually shows an old clip of former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Gandaki CM Pandey dancing during an event to declare Pokhara as Nepal’s tourism capital.
Result: False
Sources
Epardafas, March 17, 2024
Ambassador Chen Song/X (formerly Twitter), March 17, 2024
No Next Question/Instagram, March 18, 2024
Setopati /YouTube, March 17, 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.
