Fact Check: Old Video of Virat Kohli Congratulating Soldiers on Diwali Resurfaces, Misleadingly Shared as Recent

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A video of Virat Kohli is viral on social media where he can be seen wishing the soldiers a Happy Diwali. Now some users are sharing this video claiming that this is recent.

Vishvas News found in its investigation that the viral claim is false. The viral video is from the year 2016 when Virat Kohli had released a video wishing the soldiers on Diwali.

What is going viral?

Facebook user Jayram Yadav shared the video on November 1, 2024 and wrote, “Virat Kohli wished the soldiers of the country a Happy Diwali, Jai Hind Jai Bharat I love my India #indianarmy #bsf_cisf_ssb_cisf_nsg #jammukashmir”

See the archive link of the post here.

Investigation

To verify the viral claim, we searched on Google with the help of relevant keywords. We found the report related to the claim on the news website india.com. The report was published on 27 October 2016. According to the news report, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had appealed to all the countrymen to remember the soldiers on Diwali. After which Virat Kohli released this video and congratulated the soldiers on Diwali.

During the search, we also found a news report related to the video on News18’s website. According to the news published on 27 October 2016, Virat Kohli has wished Indian Army soldiers a Happy Diwali.”

We also found a report related to the video on the official YouTube channel of One India News. The video uploaded on October 29, 2016, features Virat Kohli along with Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Anupam Kher and Ravi Kishan among many other sportspersons.

To dig deeper, we reviewed Virat Kohli’s social media accounts but found no recent post featuring this video. However, we found the viral clip on his X handle, originally shared on October 27, 2016.

We shared the video with Dainik Jagran’s sports editor Abhishek Tripathi. He told us that the viral video is not recent but an old one.

Finally, we scanned the account of the user who shared the post. We found that more than 5 thousand users follow this account.