By Archis Chowdhury
An altered video showing a Kaun Banega Crorepati segment where a contestant loses the highest cash prize of Rs. 7.5 crore due to wrongly answering the final question on the Mahakal Lok of Madhya Pradesh is circulating to make false claims on social media. The claims state that the contestant erroneously answered about the Mahakal Lok being built by Bharatiya Janata Party's Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Those sharing the video claim that the contestant was misled by BJP's propaganda.
BOOM found these posts to be fake; our fact-check shows that the viral video has been edited, and that the original episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati, from which the viral footage has been taken, did not feature any question about the Mahakal Lok construction. The final question worth Rs.7.5 crore that was originally asked to the contestant was, “Which British Army unit was given the motto ‘Primus in Indis’ because it was the first to serve in India?”
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An X user (formerly Twitter) shared the video with the caption, "This man lost ₹ 7.5 crore because of the fake propaganda of the BJP. Mahakaal corridor was built by Congress leader Kamalnath Ji during his tenure as CM but due to constant lies and fake propaganda that it was built by Modi & Shivraj Singh Chauhan, this man chose that option and lost. Be aware of BJP lies, Malware is dangerous."
Click here to view an archive of the above tweet.
The same video was also shared by Satna Congress' Facebook Page with the caption (translated from Hindi), "Lost Rs. 6.5 crore due to blind devotion."
Click here to view an archive of the above post.
We also found other posts sharing the same video with the same caption. Click here, here and here to view such posts.
Fact Check
BOOM watched the viral video closely, and observed that as soon as the host, actor Amitabh Bachchan, starts reading out the question, the audio changes completely, along with the voice and ambient sounds.
Furthermore, in the video shared by the Facebook page Satna Congress, Bachchan's voice is not synchronised with his lip movements. At 0:18 mark, his voice can be heard, even though his mouth does not appear to move.
These suggest that the audio has been tampered with.
In the viral video, Bachchan addressed the contestant with the name "Shashwat Goel". Taking cue from this, we did a Google keyword search with "shashwat goel kbc", and came across an article by Indian Express titled, "KBC 14: Can you answer the Rs 7.5 crore question that Shashwat Goel failed to answer?"
According to the article, the question appeared during KBC Season 14, with the episode airing on October 12. The final question for Rs. 7.5 crore, that was directed at Goel, was, “Which British Army unit was given the motto ‘Primus in Indis’ because it was the first to serve in India?” The options given to Goel were, “A. 41st (Welsh) Regiment of Foot; B. 1st Coldstream Guards; C. 5th Light Infantry; D. 39th Regiment of Foot.”
The article states that Goel fails to answer correctly, thereby losing Rs. 7.5 crore, and winning Rs. 75 lakh instead.
BOOM also accessed a video on YouTube, that compiled all the questions asked to Goel. At 1:11:43 mark, Bachchan can be heard asking the final question worth Rs.7.5 crore, "Which British Army unit was given the motto ‘Primus in Indis’ because it was the first to serve in India?”
We compared keyframes from the above video with the viral video, and found them to be the same. However, the viral video had a completely different question.
We also accessed a website that archives all the questions and answers from KBC, and looked through all the questions from the episode that was aired on October 12, 2022.
While we could view the question "Which British Army unit was given the motto ‘Primus in Indis’ because it was the first to serve in India?”, that was mentioned in the Indian Express article, we were unable to view any question related to the Mahalak Lok and its construction.
We also did a keyword search with "mahakal lok kaun banega crorepati", and were unable to find any video from a reliable source that would suggest that such a question was asked in the show.
