Lighthouse Journalism came across a video being widely shared on Twitter. It was claimed along with the video that the person seen playing garba dance in the video is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In our investigation we found out that the man in the viral video is a lookalike of PM Modi, Vikas Mahante.
Claim:
Twitter user, Radhika Chaudhary shared the viral video on her profile.
Check the archive version of the post.
Other users too are sharing the same video.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by checking the comments on the post.
One user shared a screenshot saying it was not PM Modi. The screenshot was from the profile of Vikas Mahante.
We Google searched for his profile and found Vikas Mahante’s Instagram account.
We found a reel on his profile, where Vikas Mahante was invited as a chief guest at the London Diwali Mela and his outfit was the same as shown in the viral video.
The background of this video and the outfits of the dancers looked similar to that of the viral video.
In the next step of investigation we connected with Artist’s manager an Instagram profile which is a management representative for Vikas Mahante. They confirmed that the person in the viral video is in fact Vikas Mahante, who looks exactly like Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Conclusion: Viral video claimed to be of Prime Minister Narendra Modi doing garba is actually of his lookalike, Vikas Mahante. Viral claim is false.
