Clipped video of Indian film star's appeal on Covid lockdown shared with false claim

A clipped video of Indian film star Salman Khan has been viewed hundreds of times in social media posts that falsely claimed it shows him squaring up to a gangster whose syndicate flooded him with death threats. The video from 2020 actually shows Khan appealing to the public to follow Covid-19 lockdown rules.

"Salman Khan has replied to Lawrence Bishnoi in clear words. If you fight, you will be destroyed," read a Hindi-language X post that shared the video on October 15, 2024. 

Hindi text overlaid on the video read: "After all that has happened, Salman Khan threatened Lawrence Bishnoi."

Salman Khan is a popular Indian film star based in Mumbai, the home of the Bollywood film industry. Gangster Lawrence Bishnoi has been behind bars for nearly a decade, currently held in Gujarat facing trial for smuggling heroin from Pakistan (archived here and here).

The post, viewed more than 1.6 million times, showed a clip of Khan saying in Hindi: "I understand that you are very powerful. You are very brave. You are brave enough to lift the bier of your family members. Do you have enough courage?"

Image
Screenshot of the false post, taken on October 18, 2024

Khan has been receiving death threats from Bishnoi's gang for years in retaliation for the actor's killing of two blackbucks while on a recreational hunting trip in 1998.

The Bishnoi gang, accused of several murders and extortion rackets, hails from a wider desert-based religious sect that considers the antelope species to be the reincarnation of their guru (archived link). 

In April, Mumbai police arrested two members of the Bishnoi gang for firing gunshots in front of Khan's residence (archived link).

The video circulated after senior politician Baba Siddique was shot dead in Mumbai by members of the Bishnoi gang on October 12. Siddique was considered a close friend of Khan (archived link). 

The clip surfaced in a similar X post which racked up more than 800,000 views and was also shared on Facebook.

But in the original video, the actor in fact appealed to the public to follow Covid-19 protocols after India's first 21-day lockdown was lifted on April 14, 2020.

Covid plea

A reverse image search and keyword search on Google found a longer version of the video posted on Khan's official Instagram account on April 15, 2020.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in false posts (left) and the video shared on Salman Khan's Instagram handle (right):

Image
Screenshot comparison of the false post video (left) and the Instagram video (right)

The video falsely shared online was lifted from the 8:38 mark of Khan's Instagram video.

In the clip, Khan reacts angrily to reports of attacks on doctors and nurses and of Covid-positive patients fleeing hospitals.

"If you all had strictly followed the corona lockdown guidelines, thousands of people, doctors, police personnel would not have contracted corona and we would have returned to work. But the country will sit at home because of few people," he says in Hindi.

From the 8:38 mark of the video, he says: "I understand that you are very powerful. You are very brave. You are brave enough to lift the bier of your family members. Do you have enough courage?"

The video ends with the actor appealing to the public to stay at home and follow lockdown guidelines. 

A 21-day nationwide lockdown was announced in India on March 25, 2020 as Covid-19 cases surged (archived link). 

Khan's video appeal was published by various Indian media outlets Sansad TV and NDTV (archived here and here). 

AFP did not find any reports of Khan publicly threatening Lawrence Bishnoi, as of October 18.

Image

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

Contact us