The rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital has led to major protests taking place across the country. A video now going viral shows Indian cricketer Virat Kohli condemning violence against women.

In the viral clip, Kohli says, “It’s disturbing, and it’s shocking, and I am ashamed to be a part of that society. I think we need to change our thinking and we need to treat men and women in the same way. Be respectful and treat women with some compassion. Something like this happens and for people to watch it and not do anything about it, I think it’s a cowardly act. Those people have no right to call themselves men. I have only one question: If something like this happened, god forbid, to someone in your family, would you stand and watch or would you help?”

The text written on the viral clip reads, “Listen to what Virat Kohli is telling about Kolkata Doctor’s case and the society we live in.” Various social media users share the viral clip on Instagram, Facebook and X. An archived version of one such post can be seen here.

India Today Fact Check found that the viral clip is unrelated to the Kolkata incident. It is an old video from 2017 when Virat Kohli was condemning a molestation incident that happened in Bengaluru.

OUR PROBE

We first ran a keyword search to find if Virat Kohli had made any statement about the Kolkata rape and murder case. Had Kohli made any such statement, there would have been news reports about it, but we could not find any.

We then took keywords from the viral clip and ran a Google search. We found various media reports from 2017 where the statement from the viral clip was accredited to Virat Kohli. According to a January 2017 report by Hindustan Times, Kohli made these statements about a mass molestation incident that happened on New Year’s eve in 2017. Many women were groped and abused by revellers in Bengaluru’s MG Road and Brigade Road during New Year’s Eve celebrations.

We also found the viral clip on Virat Kohli’s official X account. The cricketer posted it on January 6, 2017. In this video, he starts by saying, “What happened in Bengaluru is really really disturbing.” In the viral clip, the part mentioning Bengaluru was also edited out.

It is thus clear that the viral clip including Virat Kohli’s statement about violence against women is old. Kohli has not made any such statement about the recent Kolkata rape-murder case.