In the fray of the Karnataka elections, as Congress clinched a landslide victory, an image showing a purported Instagram story by cricketer Virat Kohli went viral. The image showed that Kohli appreciated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi following the results of the elections.
On May 13, Congress crossed the majority mark of 113 seats in the state. Meanwhile, the BJP secured 66 seats.
Claim:
The image shows a purported screenshot by what appears to be Virat Kohli’s verified Twitter account. The image shows a picture of Rahul Gandhi with the text, “The man, the myth, the leader.”
A Twitter page ‘Nimo Yadav’, shared the image with the claim, “Virat Kohli is on , hope he doesn’t delete it #KarnatakaElectionResults2023”.
Another user shared a screenshot with a similar claim.
Fact Check:
We first checked the Instagram account of Virat Kohli. The username and profile picture seen in the viral image matched the cricketer’s Instagram page.
We found that on May 13, 2023, over the duration of 24 hours, Virat Kohli posted only two Instagram stories.
We noticed a discrepancy between the viral screenshot and the genuine story posted by Virat. The letter “L” (in lowercase) in the username has a specific font style that can be seen on all the genuine screenshots of the stories shared by Kohli. The letter “L” in the viral screenshot is quite different from the genuine screenshots.
Additionally, the verification check mark appears to be not aligned properly.
In the second viral screenshot, the check mark and username seems to be genuine and aligned correctly. However, Rahul Gandhi’s image has been placed on top of a different image underneath. Gandhi’s photo has been placed on an image of cricketer Suryakumar Yadav. This image can be seen on Kohli’s Instagram story. The cut off section of the blue jersey worn by Yadav can be seen in the lower half of the viral screenshot.
We gleaned another point from our investigation. Virat Kohli has 248 million Instagram followers. However, just one screenshot taken 17 minutes after the purported story was posted is viral on social media.
Additionally, we went through other posts by user Nimo Yadav who posted the viral image. He is known for spouting baseless conspiracy theories such as the one where he tweeted a photo of RCB captain Faf du Plessis with a sarcastic caption linking it to the Karnataka elections.
Conclusion:
As there are no credible news reports regarding Kohli’s Instagram stories supporting Gandhi and the noticeable discrepancies, we concluded that the viral images are edited and misleading. Two manipulated screenshots of Virat Kohli’s Instagram stories were shared on social media to claim that the cricketer had praised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
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Fact Check
2023-05-15 10:08:11.0
Do These Viral Images Show Kohli Supporting Congress Following Karnataka Elections? No, Images Are Edited And Misleading
