Authors
Ruby leads editorial, operations and initiatives at Newschecker. In her former avatar at New Delhi Television (NDTV), India’s leading national news network, she was a news anchor, supervising producer and senior output editor. Her over a decade-long career encompasses ground-breaking reportage from conflict zones and reporting on terror incidents, election campaigns, and gender issues. Ruby is an Emmy-nominated producer and has handled both local and international assignments, including the coverage of Arab Spring in 2011, the US Presidential elections in 2016, and ground reportage on the Kashmir issue since 2009.
Claim: Rohit Sharma congratulated Virat Kohli on becoming the father of his second child in a video call.
Fact: The video is edited and made by editing together two unrelated videos.
Recently, Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma joyfully welcomed their second child on February 15. Kohli took to Instagram to share the delightful news, revealing that they have named their son Akaay.
Meanwhile, a video is doing rounds on social media where Indian team captain Rohit Sharma is seen having a video call with Virat Kohli. Posting that video on Facebook a user claimed that Rohit Sharma congratulated Virat Kohli on becoming the father of his second child in a video call.
Many such claims can be seen here and here.
Fact Check/ Verification
At the beginning of the clip posted on Facebook, Rohit Sharma can be heard laughing and saying, “Oh my brother…ok! take care…I’ll see you soon.”
We performed a reverse image search of a keyframe of the viral clip and found that Mumbai Indian posted a longer version of that same video on their official YouTube channel on April 2, 2020, and captioned it, “Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah – Instagram LIVE”. At the beginning of this video and the 36-minute and 16-second mark, Rohit is saying the same words to Bumrah, which he can be heard saying in the viral video as well.
Some media outlets like Sportskeeda, and The Quint also published some news on it at the same time.
Virat Kohli can be heard saying in the viral clip, “She is well, She is healthy. Parents are healthy. The family is all ok, everyone safe. That’s been a positive…”.
Subsequently, we ran another reverse image search of a keyframe of the viral clip which led us to a video posted on Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin’s official Instagram handle on May 30, 2020.
In that video, Ashwin asked Virat about his wife Anushka Sharma. In response, the Indian batter said that she along with their parents were all well.
Conclusion
Thus it is safe to conclude that the video is edited and made by grouping two unrelated videos.
Result: False
Sources:
Video posted on Mumbai Indians’ official YouTube channel
Reports by Sportskeeda, and The Quint
Video posted on Ravichandran Ashwin’s official Instagram handle
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Authors
Ruby leads editorial, operations and initiatives at Newschecker. In her former avatar at New Delhi Television (NDTV), India’s leading national news network, she was a news anchor, supervising producer and senior output editor. Her over a decade-long career encompasses ground-breaking reportage from conflict zones and reporting on terror incidents, election campaigns, and gender issues. Ruby is an Emmy-nominated producer and has handled both local and international assignments, including the coverage of Arab Spring in 2011, the US Presidential elections in 2016, and ground reportage on the Kashmir issue since 2009.
