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. 

(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. 

• 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. 

• 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. 

• 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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