‘Satsada Island’ sold to US company by ex-Gujarat CM? Old, false claim by late Rajiv Dixit resurfaces

Videos of speeches by the late Indian social activist Rajiv Dixit continue to do the rounds on social media. Recently, a video of one of his old speeches, where he talks about an island called ‘Satsada Bet’ near Gujarat’s Gandhidham in the Kutch district, went viral. In this, Dixit claims that under Chimanbhai Patel, then chief minister of Gujarat, the island, spread over 60,000 square kilometres, was sold to an American company named Cargill.

We broke down the claims in Dixit’s video as follows:

1. Satsada Bet is a massive island located in the sea near Gandhidham, Gujarat.
2. The area of the island is about 60,000 square kilometres.
3. The island was sold by former Gujarat CM Chimanbhai Patel to Cargill. 

Instagram handle ‘kutch_first’ posted this video on May 25, 2025. At the time of writing, this post had over 323,000 views. It has now been deleted. (Archive)

This video was also posted on YouTube, where it garnered more than 5.5 million views and over 80,000 likes.

Truth Contrary to Claims

Alt News first checked whether there was any island named Satsada Bet near Gandhidham in the Kutch district of Gujarat and found nothing on Google Maps. We also checked for this island on Data Web’s site, which provides information about islands in India and found no island by this name in Gujarat or anywhere else in India. Moreover, no island in Gujarat has an area of 60,000 square kilometres.

In fact, the entire Kutch district in Gujarat, which is the largest in the country, is spread across an area of ​​45,674 square kilometres. So, it is unlikely that an island that is part of it to be bigger than the district itself.

We also did not find any credible news reports corroborating the claim that former Gujarat Chief Minister Chimanbhai Patel sold an island to an American company.

We then tried to locate the island shown in the viral video with claims that this was the Satsada Bet or Islands.

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A reverse image search made it clear that the place shown is actually the INS Khukri memorial located in Diu Island, near Gujarat and not Satsada Bet. It has been used in media reports and images found on the official website of the Diu government.

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Thus, late Rajiv Dixit’s claims, now viral, that an island named Satsada with an area of 60,000 square kilometres in Gujarat’s Kutch district was sold off to an American company by a former Gujarat CM are baseless.