A 19-second clip has gone viral on social media with the claim that a life-size statue of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli has been unveiled at the iconic Times Square in New York. The claim has surfaced in the context of India's flawless campaign in the T20 World Cup co-hosted by the West Indies and the USA from June 1 to June 29.
India played three league matches in the recently built Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York, including the high-profile game against Pakistan.
Verified X user @StanVirat shared the video and asserted that the statue be inducted as the 'eighth wonder of the world.' At the time of this article being written, it has garnered more than 1.9 Lakh views and more than 700 retweets.
Other X users like @BluntIndianGal, @abhishekumar_18, @RONBupdates, also shared the video with the claim that a statue of Virat Kohli had been unveiled at Times Square.
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Several users on Facebook also posted images of the presumed 'statue', claiming that it was a testament to the Indian batsman's prowess and international fame.
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We also found several media reports from prominent news outlets, which reported the purported unveiling of Virat Kohli's life-size statue at Times Square, treating this as evidence of the Indian cricketer's ascendancy to the position of a 'global icon.' These include reports by India TV, News 18, Money Control, and ABP News (Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4).
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Fact Check
A keyword search on X revealed that the video which has gone viral was initially shared on June 23 by Duroflex, an Indian company dealing in mattresses, pillows, sleep accessories, furniture and bed linen.
We noticed that the tweet had hashtag that said 'CGI' (computer-generated imagery).
Taking a cue from this, we ran another keyword search on Google, which led us to this video uploaded by the official YouTube channel of Duroflex. We noticed that the caption, as well as the description of this video, revealed the tag 'CGI', indicating that it was a computer-generated visualization, and not a real statue.
Further, we came across an Instagram post by Duroflex, where the caption indicated that the viral video of the statue was computer-generated.
Rectification by Media Outlets
Some media outlets like The Indian Express, Live Mint, and Hindustan Times, which erroneously reported on "the unveiling of a larger than life statue of Kohli at Times Square" (Archives - 1, 2, 3), subsequently updated their reports and mentioned that the statue seen in the viral video was computer-generated. (Links - 1, 2, 3)
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To sum up, the viral claim that a statue of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli has been revealed at the iconic Times Square in New York is false. The viral video of the statue, originally released by Duroflex, is a computer-generated one.
It is pertinent to add that Virat Kohli has been associated with Duroflex as its brand ambassador since May 2023.
Prantik Ali is an intern at Alt News.
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