Despite boycott calls from some sections including the Indian Right Wing, Shah Rukh Khan’s film ‘Pathaan’ has set the box office on fire. Against this backdrop, social media users have shared several videos that supposedly show both disappointment and excitement among fans.

Video #1

Sagar Kumar, a journalist affiliated with pro-BJP propaganda outlet Sudarshan News, shared a video where a disgruntled fan can be seen complaining about the movie. His tweet received 461.5K views at the time of the writing of this article.

The same video was also shared by others, including @IShubhamBJP and @purnesh_suthar. The former’s Twitter bio proclaims that he is followed by the offices of finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, commerce and industries minister Piyush Goyal, and BJP leaders Kapil Mishra and Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga.

Fact Check

We broke down the video into key-frames using InVID and then performed a reverse image search on one of the stills. Through this, we came across a YouTube video of people reviewing the 2022 Bollywood film ‘Brahmastra’. The woman who appears in the video shared by Kumar appears here at the 3:14-minute mark, and a clipped version of the video is being falsely shared as an audience reaction to ‘Pathaan’.

On watching the entire clip, it can be understood that the woman’s remarks were made in jest. Moreover, the video is not related to the film ‘Pathaan’.

Video #2

Sagar Kumar has shared another video where audiences can be seen coming out of the theatre and apparently calling ‘Pathaan’ a bad movie. Sagar wrote on Twitter, “Ouchhhh 😝 #फ्लॉप_हुई_पठान”.

This video was also shared by a user called @technoamarjeet.

Fact Check

We took a close look at the clip and noticed a frame in which the poster of the film ‘Zero’ can be seen. Below we have highlighted the relevant still.

Taking a clue from this, we performed a keyword search and came across the same clip on YouTube uploaded in December 2018. The women that appear at the 17-second mark in the tweeted video also appears in the YouTube video at the 2:32-minute mark.

The first two individuals seen in the video in Kumar’s tweet appear in a different YouTube video posted by FilmiFever in December 2018.

The other few individuals also appear in a separate video uploaded by the same channel in 2018.

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To sum it up, Sagar Kumar of Sudarshan News uploaded a four-year-old clip claiming it to be the audience’s reaction after watching ‘Pathaan’.

Video #3

A Twitter handle named @SahilBatt123 shared a video of a massive crowd inside a mall and claimed that the video was from Bhagalpur, a town in Bihar, and the rush of people showed craze for Shah Rukh Khan. The tweet has got more than 100,000 views and the video has gone viral.

Another user, @MohdAad35802156 shared the same video indicating it was the first-day-first-show crowd at a mall in Haridwar. The tweet went viral with more than 1,700 retweets and 7,400 likes.

Fact Check

On breaking down the video into key-frames and reverse-searching them using Google Lens, Alt News came across an article from NDTV published in July 2022 which had the same video. As per NDTV’s report, the viral video is of a midnight shopping sale in a newly opened shopping complex called ‘Lulu Mall’ in Kochi, Kerala.

Hence, the video is of a midnight shopping sale in Kerela and not of people turning up in Bihar’s Bhagalpur to watch ‘Pathaan’.

Video #4

A Twitter user named @NadeemAhmedsay1 shared a video of a huge crowd rush and claimed it to be from the UAE where people were celebrating the success of ‘Pathaan’. The video has over 140,000 views and has gone viral on Twitter.

This clip was also shared on Instagram as part of a meme montage to show the success of the movie despite calls for a boycott from the Indian Right Wing.

Fact Check

We again broke down the video into detailed key-frames using InVID, and performed a reverse image search on one of the still using Google. This gave us some results that appeared relevant to the video. Taking note of those search results, we performed a Google search using relevant keywords, which led us to a TikTok video posted in December 2022.

We found that the video was from Lusail Metro station in Doha, Qatar, and was shared in the context of a massive crowd rush during the FIFA World Cup 2022. Hence, the video being shared as visuals of celebrations amongst UAE fans for the film ‘Pathaan’ is actually an old and unrelated video.

Vansh Shah is an intern with Alt News.

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