AQI chants at Delhi stadium when Rekha Gupta greeted Messi: TOI deletes video without citing reason

As part of India tour, football legend Lionel Messi visited Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium on December 15. When Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta came onto the stage at the stadium to greet Messi, chants of “AQI-AQI” erupted from several sections of the stadium apparently in response to the rising air pollution levels in Delhi, where the Air Quality Index (AQI) has frequently crossed the ‘severe’ level.

Several social media users, including Aam Aadmi Party leader and former Delhi minister Saurabh Bhardwaj, shared a video online showing the crowd in the stadium chanting “AQI-AQI.” A number of major media outlets, including The Times of India, covered the incident. The official X handle of TOI posted a video with the caption, “As CM Gupta came on stage to receive Messi, chants of ‘AQI, AQI’ suddenly erupted from a section of the stadium.”

However, TOI later deleted this post without any explanation.

After the video went viral, several pro-BJP social media accounts and RSS journal Panchjanya claimed that the crowd at the stadium was chanting “Messi-Messi” when Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta came on stage, and that the audio had been edited to make it sound like “AQI-AQI.”

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Panchjanya, too, later deleted the post.

Quoting the RSS mouthpiece’s post, BJP Delhi wrote that Aam Aadmi Party leaders were amplifying a fake video.

बेशर्मी में AAP जैसा कोई नहीं

फर्जी कहानियां, झूठे वादे, आरोप प्रत्यारोप की राजनीति के बाद बेरोजगार हुए आप नेताओं के पास अब झूठी वीडियो बनाने और स्क्रिप्ट लिखने के अलावा कोई काम नहीं है।

जब सत्ता में थे तब घोटाले किए, दिल्ली को जमकर लूटा, बहाने बनाए। प्रदूषण के लिए पहले पंजाब… https://t.co/KC95YtoHGs

— BJP Delhi (@BJP4Delhi) December 16, 2025

Fact Check

Alt News performed a keyword search using terms related to this incident, which led us to several videos on social media in which the crowd can be clearly heard chanting “AQI-AQI.” In one video, the crowd is also heard chanting, “Down with Rekha Gupta” (Rekha Gupta hai hai).

For example, in this video, people are seen chanting “AQI-AQI,” and their lip-sync matches the chants.

In the following visuals, too, the crowd is heard chanting “AQI-AQI,” and the lip movement of the man standing in front also matches the “AQI-AQI” chants.

In another similar video, people are chanting “Rekha Gupta hai-hai,” and here too, the lip movement of the people matches the chants.

In the following video, the crowd first chants “AQI-AQI,” then puts their hands around their mouths and boos (a shout of disapproval), while Rekha Gupta can be seen on the stage.

A news report published on the front page of the December 16 Delhi edition of the Indian Express contains a statement from a business professional named Vibhor, who reached the stadium a few hours before the gates opened at 11 am. He stated, “I was there at the stadium this morning. The air was definitely not good…the impact of smog was visible even in video recordings on phone cameras. The stadium turned to chanting ‘AQI, AQI’ when the Delhi CM entered. It was an impromptu action, to be honest.” 

There is sufficient evidence to conclude that the crowd was unhappy with the air pollution issue and chanted “AQI-AQI” when Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta came on stage at the Arun Jaitley Stadium during football superstar Messi’s GOAT India Tour event. The BJP, its sympathizer social media accounts, and the RSS mouthpiece made the misleading claim that people in the stadium were chanting “Messi-Messi,” and that the audio had been edited to make it seem like they were shouting “AQI-AQI.”

The question remains on why the Times of India deleted the post when the video was authentic.