A viral video of cricketer Hardik Pandya being heckled by fans of Rohit Sharma changing slogans supporting him, is fake and digitally altered.
BOOM found that no such sloganeering in support of Rohit Sharma can be heard in the original version of the video.
Mumbai Indians sparked major controversies when the team management chose to designate Hardik Pandya as their new captain, replacing Rohit Sharma. This leadership change occurred within a month after Pandya rejoined Mumbai Indians, who previously led the Gujarat Titans to an IPL Trophy victory in 2022. Many fans of Rohit Sharma expressed their outrage openly, supporting Sharma and pointed out his leadership potential in securing five IPL titles for the Mumbai Indians.
Amid this, the video featuring Hardik Pandya with slogans "Mumbai cha Raja Rohit Sharma" went viral on social media.
Click here to view the post.
News outlet The Free Press Journal too picked up the video to report it to be real. The outlet reported about the video saying, "Now, the video has gone viral on social media where Rohit Sharma fans shouting slogans at Hardik Pandya at the Mumbai Airport. Hardik Pandya can be seen getting down from his car while fans were chanting 'Mumbai Cha Raja Rohit Sharma' in support of Hitman. However, the all-rounder ignored the chants of Rohit Sharma fans and entered the airport."
Click here to view the report.
Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into multiple keyframes and performed reverse image search on them. The search led us to a news report by Mid-Day from January 23, 2020, carrying multiple pictures of Pandya where he can be seen in the same black attire.
The report further stated that the photos show Pandya at Mumbai airport after he was dropped from the India tour of New Zealand at that time.
Taking a cue, we ran a related keyword search and discovered that the original version of the video was posted by an Instagram account called Bollywood Pap on January 21, 2020.
We noticed that the original video does not contain any such sloganeering in Pandya's presence. Moreover, the original video was uploaded much before the Mumbai Indians announced the change in their leadership which took place on December 15, 2023.
The sightings of Hardik Pandya at Mumbai airport were also shared on Viral Bhayani's verified Instagram account at that time.
On the other hand, we ran a keyword search with the slogan "Mumbai cha Raja Rohit Sharma" and found several videos from January 2020 carrying the same audio.
