Old Video Shared as ISRO Chief Dancing to Celebrate Chandrayaan-3's Success

The video was not taken after the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 but from earlier in July.

The video was from a cultural evening of a official event held in Bengaluru. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

A viral video showing the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Chairman, S Somanath, along with others, dancing away to the tunes of a song is going viral as recent, following the successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Who shared it?: The post was picked by several X (formerly Twitter) users and was being shared as recent.

• Users have shared the video with the claim that the ISRO chief, S Somanath broke into a celebratory dance in light of the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3.

• Some news organisations News18 and Times Now also shared the claim as recent.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

What is the truth?: While it is the ISRO Chairman, S Somanath in the video, it is not recent.

• We found that the video was shot earlier in the month of July in Bengaluru.

How did we find out?: Upon doing a reverse image search on Google, we came across WION News correspondent, Sidharth MP's post, who shared the video on 23 August, after Chandrayaan-3’s successful landing.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source:X/Screenshot) 

• However, we found comments from the journalist in a subsequent post that clarified that the video is old and not from the day of the Chandrayaan-3 landing.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

• The Quint spoke to Sidharth MP regarding the time and location of the video. He said that the video was from an event from the first week of July.

• We found that Somanath attended the G20 Space Economy Meeting that was held on 6 July in Bengaluru.

• We found a video on ISRO's official YouTube page, streamed on 6 July.

• We could see Somanath speaking from the 22:44 minute mark and can be seen wearing the same attire as the viral video.

Here is the link to the full video on ISRO's YouTube page. 

(Source: YouTube/Screenshot) 

• The journalist also requested social media users/influencers and media channels to "do some digging into my first comment/clarification about it being an old video before circulating this video for what it is not."

Conclusion: While the viral video does show ISRO Chairman S Somanath, it is not from the day of the Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon. The video dates back to July

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