No, This Video Doesn't Show Actor Sidharth Shukla Suffering a Heart Attack

The video is almost a week old and it shows a man suffering a heart attack in Bengaluru.

(Editor's Note: The story was first published on 2 September and is being republished from The Quint's archives in the light of the claim recirculating after the demise of Puneet Rajkumar.)

Actor Sidharth Shukla passed away due to a heart attack at Mumbai's Cooper Hospital on Thursday, 2 September.

Shortly after the news broke, a video of a man collapsing while sitting on a flight of stairs was shared by people with a claim that it showed the moment when Shukla suffered a heart attack.

However, we found that the video, which is from Bengaluru, showed the moment a 33-year-old man collapsing outside a gym. The incident occurred on 25 August, a week before Shukla's death.

CLAIM

The video was first shared by an imposter social media account of news publication DNA called '@dnazeenews'.

The caption of the post said, "Actor #SiddharthShukla Dies Of an Heart Attack. Confirmed by Cooper Hospital. Om Shanti [sic]." The video had been viewed over 91,000 times at the time of writing this story.

The account, which was created in February 2021, had a description that said, "Follow Back Zee News official Account of DNA".

The same video was then shared by other social media users, archives of which can be found here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

On carefully looking at the video, one can notice a date stamp on the footage that reads '25/08/2021', which clearly debunks the fact that the video is from now.

We then fragmented the video using InVid WeVerify Google Chrome extension and followed it up with a reverse image search on Google.

This led us to an article published on 30 August on Kannada website Vitla News. The article mentioned that the video is from Bengaluru and shows a man collapsing after he suffered a heart attack.

It further mentioned that the incident happened at Banashankari Gold Gym.

Taking a cue from here, we contacted the Banashankari police station and the assistant sub-inspector (ASI) told us that the video was indeed from that incident in Bengaluru.

We also spoke to the centre manager at Banashankari Gold Gym who said that the video is from their gym and the person seen in the video had come for a trial class.

"He was not our regular member and had come for a trial class. We rushed him to the hospital after he collapsed and informed his family. I don't have any other details."

Centre Manager, Gold Gym

Clearly, an unrelated video is being shared to claim that the video shows the late actor suffering a heart attack.

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