The Indian men’s cricket team arrived at Nagpur on February 2, 2022, to play the 1st Test match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy against Australia. Leading up to the series, a viral video claiming that Indian quicks — Shami, Siraj, and Umran — refused to apply tika on their foreheads because of their religion, is doing the rounds on social media. People are calling out the players and their religion for their actions.
A Facebook user posted the viral video with a caption: इंडियन क्रिकेट टीम के मोहम्मद सिराज और इमरान मलिक ,मोहम्मद शमी स्वागत के लिए टीका नहीं लगवाते क्योंकि वे भारत की क्रिकेट टीम के स्तर पर पहुंचने के बाद भी अपने मुस्लिम धर्म के प्रति कट्टर/लेकिन हम सेक्यूलर हिंदू जाली टोपी पहने और कब्र मजार पर चादर चढ़ाने नहीं झुकते (English translation: Mohammad Siraj and Imran Malik of the Indian cricket team, Mohammad Shami do not apply tika for reception, because they are staunch towards their Muslim religion even after reaching the level of India’s cricket team. Don’t bow down to offer)
You can check the post here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral picture and found it to be misleading.
Even though the caption states that Mhd Shami refused to apply a tilak, we could not find the player in the video. Watching the video closely, we could see that apart from Siraj there were a few other members of the team as well, who refused to get a tilak.
Running a Reverse Image Search of the video keyframes to check its authenticity, we spotted a YouTube video on the official channel of News Tak, dated February 4, 2023, with a title: बवाल: Viral वीडियो में Siraj, Umran Malik के अलावा दो और लोगों ने नहीं लगाया टीका, जानिए मामला.
The video has debunked the entire claim, saying that apart from Siraj and Umran, there were two more team members — Vikram Rathour (batting coach) and Hari Mohan Prasad (performance analyst), who refused to get a tika for whatever reason. This indicates that the claims in the viral video are baseless.
Also, a news article on the Amar Ujala website corroborates the claim that Siraj and Umran are not the only ones to refuse the tika on their arrival.
We came across a tweet by Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt news. Zubair, while replying to Suresh Chavhanke — the Editor-in-chief at Sudarshan News, points out that Vikram Rathour and Hari Prasad Mohan didn’t apply tika as well, but the right-wingers are targeting the Muslim players only.
Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral post’s claim is misleading.
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