Lighthouse Journalism came across a widely shared rumour on social media platforms, claiming that the Indian former tennis player Sania Mirza has married Indian cricketer Mohammed Shami. During the investigation we found that the viral claims are false. Sania Mirza’s father has clarified on this issue. The rumour has been going around since Sania Mirza’s divorce with Shoaib Malik.
Claim:
Facebook user Alee Shahbaz shared the viral post on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other social media users too shared the posts on their profiles.
Investigation:
We started our investigation with a simple Google keyword search and found a news report on NDTV.
The report mentioned; Sania Mirza’s father Imran told NDTV: “This is all rubbish. She has not even met him.”
Loksatta too did a story on the same.
We then checked the image that was used along with the post. We ran a Google reverse image search on the picture.
We found that the image doing rounds on social media is edited and is actually an old image from Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik’s reception ceremony in Hyderabad in 2010.
The image of Shoib Malik was edited with that of Mohammed Shami.
The solo picture of Sania Mirza in the collage is from her wedding.
She chose to wear her mother’s wedding saree for the occasion.
And the third picture of Mohammed Shami is from early this year. He had posted the pictures on Instagram in January 2024.
Conclusion: The viral image of Sania Mirza and Mohammed Shami’s wedding is edited.
