An image, purportedly showing an article on The Indian Express' website, claims that actress Sai Pallavi is being sued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for her remarks made on television is being shared on social media platforms.
(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)
We received a query about this on our WhatsApp tipline as well.
What is the truth?: The claim is false as The Indian Express has not published any such story.
Further, the purported post contains a link that leads to a website. The domain name of which is 'zelvix' and claims to be a trading website.
How did we find out?: We received the link to the purported article on our WhatsApp tipline.
The link reflected a website starting with 'zelvix.space' in the URL, whereas the publication's website uses 'indianexpress.com'.
Further, upon opening the purported article link, it looked similar to the Express website.
However, upon clicking on the Indian Express header, it led to a different website with the name Zelvix.
Similarly, the link in the viral post also leads to the same website.
We looked for the domain details of Zelvix Space on 'Whois.com' and it was registered on 24 January 2024 with the latest update on 9 February.
However, the country of registration is not mentioned on the website.
To check further, we ran a Google reverse image search on the images and frames of Sai Pallavi used in the purported article.
We came across a video of the Tamil talk show called "Vanakkam Tamizha" on Sun TV.
Swipe right to see the comparison.
Here is a comparison between the frames used in the purported article and Sun TV interview.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
The purported article mentioned Aswath Chandrasekar as the host of the talk show. However, the person hosting the episode with Sai Pallavi is VJ Nikki.
Additionally, we did not find any news reports on the Indian Express or any other news organisation that mentioned the actress being sued by the RBI.
Conclusion: It is clear that the website has impersonated the Indian Express website to make false claims about Sai Pallavi and lead people to the trading website.
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