An old video of a huge crowd inside a shopping mall in Kochi is circulating on social media with a false claim that it shows film enthusiasts outside a multiplex in Bhagalpur, Bihar, waiting to watch Shah Rukh Khan’s latest release Pathaan.
BOOM found that the video shows a huge crowd that had gathered in LuLu Mall in Kochi, Kerala on the occasion of a special midnight sale day in July, 2022.
Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone starrer Pathaan, which released on January 25, 2023, is touted as the fastest grossers of this year, with the film receiving positive response from movie-buffs and critics alike. The film has already collected 500 crores five days into business. Read more here.
The video has been captioned on Facebook as, “After the posters were torn by some people of Boycott gang in #Bhagalpur but now you can see Pathan movie has spread its charm in #Bhagalpur Never seen such craze before Craze for #Shahrukhkhan is unbelievable.”
Watch the video here.
The video is also circulating on Twitter with a similar claim.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search with keyframes of the video and found that the same video featured in news reports from July, 2022.
According to a news report by the Mint published on July 10, 2022 the video is from Kerala's LuLu Mall. The article, titled, “Huge crowd gathered at Kerala’s LuLu Mall during midnight sale,” states that LuLu Mall outlets in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi offered midnight sale for customers with discounted price on all items; the offer was available for the public from 11:59 pm on July 6 till the dawn of July 7, 2022.
The article also sited a video with the same visuals that was tweeted by Paytm founder Vijay Sekhar Sharma on July 9.
Joy Shadanandan, regional director of the LuLu Group was also quoted in the article as saying, "We are aware that there could be a lot of hindrances and drawbacks initially. However, we will study all those aspects and see how we can introduce this in a full-phased manner in the future.”
The same video was also reported by News 18 Kerala on July 9. Read the Hindustan Times report here.
BOOM has compared street view available on Google Maps and the screenshot from the video which shows the outlets of ‘LuLu Connect’ and ‘Indentiti’ in both the frames of LuLu mall in Kochi.
We also can spot the ‘Fastrack’ and ‘Lenovo’ outlets side by side on the Google Maps that was also seen when the camera panned in the video.
