Fact Check: Edited Video Of Rahul Gandhi Targeting PM Modi Goes Viral With Misleading Claim

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A video of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi is going viral these days. In it, he appears to be discussing making pakodas (fritters) from the sewer gas. The video is being made viral as if Rahul Gandhi has made this statement.

Vishvas News investigated the viral post and discovered that Rahul Gandhi was criticising BJP and PM Modi. Rahul Gandhi was referencing a statement made by PM Modi. The video has been tampered to make it misleading.

What is going viral

Facebook user Birendra Mani posted a video with the caption, ”If gas is produced from the drain, then why do we buy a cylinder worth Rs 1200?”

In the video, Rahul Gandhi can be heard saying, ”Put a pipe in the drain. There is gas in the drain. The gas will go into the pipe. Burn the gas from that pipe and make pakodas and the media people say wow wow what a thing you said. It was fun.”

The content of the viral post has been written verbatim here for the purpose of fact-checking. Many users are sharing it, considering it to be true. You can check the archive version of the post here.

Investigation

To investigate the viral video, Vishvas News first extracted its key frames and  uploaded them in Google Lens tool. This led to the discovery of a speech of Rahul Gandhi on a YouTube channel named ‘News Tak’. This video uploaded on May 18, 2024, was from a rally in Delhi during the Lok Sabha elections. In this rally, he targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, “Brothers and sisters, put a pipe in the drain. There is gas in the drain. The gas will go in the pipe. Light the gas from that pipe and make pakodas. And the media people say wow wow what a thing you said. It was fun.”

Listening to this speech, it became clear that the part where Rahul Gandhi’ mentioned PM Modi’s name was edited.

Taking investigation forward, Vishvas News reached out to Girish Kumar from the Congress’s social media team. The viral post was shared with him. He confirmed that Rahul Gandhi had made this statement while referring to Narendra Modi’s speech on drains. He added that lies are being spread against Rahul Gandhi by making the edited video viral.

During the search, we came across a video of PM Modi uploaded on BBC News Hindi’s YouTube channel on August 13, 2018. In this five-year-old video, PM Modi can be heard saying that he had read in the newspaper that a tea seller used to make tea by extracting gas from the drain. The full video of PM Modi can be seen below.

At the end of the investigation, it was discovered that the user who posted the viral post, Birendra Mani, lives in Delhi and has a following of 4.9k people on Facebook.