A message linked to the death of Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar (46), who recently died of cardiac arrest, has been widely shared on social media. The message attributed to doctor Devi Shetty -Cardiac surgeon and founder of Narayana Health claims the actor died as ‘he did too much to be fit.’ Newschecker’s investigation found the message was falsely attributed to Shetty.
The untimely death of Rajkumar on October 29, reportedly due to massive cardiac arrest got netizens talking about the possible reasons for his death.
In this context the viral message reads, “…In the last few years, I have lost at least 8 to 9 people known to me personally, and a few celebrities too, who were in their 40s who died because of doing too much to be “fit”. Unfortunately, they only looked fit, six-packs and all. Today Puneeth Rajkumar gets added to this list…” has been attributed to Shetty.
The message claims moderation is key to a healthy life and urges people to maintain a moderate diet, rest, and exercise.
The message has been posted over 50 times on Facebook and has garnered hundreds of likes and shares on the platform.
While several Twitter users also shared the message, a few Tweets mentioned they had received the viral message through WhatsApp groups.
Factcheck/Verification
To understand if Shetty made these remarks following Rajkumar’s death, Newschecker analyzed the conversation around the viral message on Facebook and found a comment to one of the posts which claimed that the message was originally written by a Facebook user called Purnima Ranganath.
Newschecker reached out to Ranganath for comments but has not received a reply at the time of writing this fact-check. We will update the copy once we have her response.
On analysing the comments around the posts on Twitter, we found a statement released by Narayana Health.
“NH would like to clarify that this forwarded message supposedly from Dr. Devi Shetty, is fake and did not originate from his office. Any reference or attribution made to him is incorrect”, the statement said.
Further, we searched for statements made by Shetty on the actor’s death and found a panel discussion on Times Now dated October 29.
“Whatever I discuss with you it has nothing to do with his (Rajkumar’s) death or ailments,” begins Shetty and continues to add, “Indians are genetically 3 times more vulnerable for heart attack than Europeans…Every 40-yr-old male Indian is a heart patient unless proven otherwise.”
Newschecker contacted Devi Shetty who confirmed, “The message is fake…I am not his doctor, I have no idea what he suffers from. I never spoke about the actor,” to us.
Conclusion:
A viral message on social media linked to actor Puneeth Rajkumar’s death has been falsely attributed to doctor Devi Shetty.
Result: Fabricated News
Our Sources:
Doctor Devi Shetty
Times Now’s Tweet
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