Lighthouse Journalism found a video being shared on social media platforms. In the video Indian cricketer Virat Kohli was seen demanding death sentence for the rapists and also expressed sadness for the victim of Kolkata rape and murder case. During the investigation we found that the video is fake and edited and that Virat Kohli has not issued any statement on the same.
Claim:
The video is being widely shared with the claim that Virat Kohli has extended support and demanded death sentences for rapists.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
Through keyframes we found the video uploaded on an X handle.
We also found it on other social media handles.
The video looked similar, we then ran a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from this video.
This led us to a similar video uploaded on the X handle of Royal Challengers Bengaluru. This was a one minute clip.
We found the complete video on the YouTube channel of Royal Challengers.
The video uploaded two years ago was titled: RCB Podcast: How the IPL Changed My Life ft. Virat Kohli | Full Episode
We then checked if Virat Kohli has issued any statement on the Kolkata case, through a Google keyword search. We found that he did condemn a molestation case in the past, but has not issued a statement regarding the Kolkata rape and murder case yet.
Conclusion: The viral video claiming that Indian cricketer Virat Kohli is demanding the death penalty for rape and expressing sadness over the Kolkata case is edited and fake. Kohli has not made any such statement.
