Old, edited video shared claiming audience chanted 'Jai Shri Ram' during India vs Pakistan match

By: Praveen Kumar H

October 20 2023

Old, edited video shared claiming audience chanted 'Jai Shri Ram' during India vs Pakistan match

A 2022 video from the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad has been reshared with an edited audio claiming that it is from the recent Pakistan vs India ICC ODI Men's World Cup 2023 match held on October 14, 2023 in which the entire audience chanted 'Jai Shri Ram.'

Fact-Check

The Verdict False

Although "Jai Shri Ram" was chanted during the October 14 match, this video going viral is from 2022.

India won against Pakistan in the ICC Men's World Cup 2023 match held at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on October 14. Soon after India’s victory, social media users started sharing many videos claiming them to be shot at the stadium.

What is the claim?

One such 10-second long video showing a stadium full of people purportedly chanting “Jai Shri Ram” is going viral on social media. Apart from other users, this was posted on X, Facebook, and YouTube by Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on October 14, with the caption “What a VIBE ! The Whole Crowd was Singing Jai Shree Ram, at the grand #NarendraModiStadium #INDvsPAK #ICCCricketWorldCup23 #TeamIndia #JaiShreeRam #PrabhuShreeRam.”

It has been shared by many other users on X with the posts combined garnering hundreds of thousands of views. The archived versions of the posts can be found here and here.

The claim shared by Devendra Fadnavis and others has gone viral on X. (Source: X/Screenshots)

The same has also been shared on Facebook. The archived posts can be found here and here.

The same claim is also circulating on Facebook. (Source: Facebook/Screenshots)However, this video is old and has been digitally altered.

What we found

By reverse-searching screenshots of the viral video, we found a longer and uncropped version of the viral video posted on YouTube by the account Rk Sportz Foundation on May 28, 2022. The video caption reads, “Goosebumps Guaranteed🇮🇳 | Vande Mataram by 1 Lakh people in the Narendra Modi stadium, Ahmedabad.” In the video, the audience can be heard singing along to A R Rahman’s Vande Mataram song playing at the stadium.

The 10-second viral clip can be seen between the timestamp 1:20 and 1:30 of the YouTube video. We found multiple visual markers in terms of similarities between the two videos like the advertisements/logos on the field, people in the audience and their positions.

Comparison of the viral video and the video uploaded to YouTube by Rk Sportz Foundation in 2022. (Source:X/YouTube/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

We searched for more context and found that on the same date, many people had shared similar videos on X with captions and hashtags suggesting it was from the Indian Premiere League (IPL) match between Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) held at the Narendra Modi Stadium on May 27, 2022.

Comparison of the viral video and the video uploaded to X in 2022. (Source:X/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

To establish that all these videos taken from different angles are from the same event, we compared visuals such as the advertisement on the field and the in-stadium display shown in the viral video, the various social media videos, and the official IPL highlights from May 27, 2022 to find multiple similarities.

Comparison of the viral video and official IPL highlights and another video uploaded to YouTube in 2022. (Source:X/IPL/YouTube/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

Comparison of official ICC highlights of the 2023 India Vs Pakistan march and a recent YouTube video for visual similarities. (Source: ICC/YouTube/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

What about the audio?

We could not hear any "Jai Shri Ram" chanting in the longer version of the viral video and also in the other social media videos from the same event in 2022. Instead, we could only hear the audience singing along to the Vande Mataram song.

Based on these comparisons, we concluded that the audio in the viral video was later digitally inserted. Logically Facts was unable to trace the source of the audio of the chanting used in the viral video.

'Jai Shri Ram' chant during the October 14 World Cup match

Different videos posted since October 14 on social media including by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma besides some news reports point to the fact that the audience did sing along to the song "‎Bharat Ka Baccha Baccha Jai Shri Ram Bolega" (India's children will say Jai Shri Ram) played in the stadium during the ICC ODI 2023 World Cup India vs Pakistan match. However, the videos from October 14 have been filmed during the daytime at the stadium, contrary to the nighttime recording seen in the viral video. Moreover, it is quite clear that the viral clip in question is not recent but at least from 2022 with no connection to the October 14 World Cup match.

The verdict

A video that has been circulating online since at least May 2022 has been cropped and reshared with ‘digitally inserted’ audio to falsely claim that it is from the ICC ODI 2023 World Cup India vs Pakistan match held on October 14 and it shows the crowd chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.