Fact Check: Video claiming Waheeda Rehman dancing to one of her hit numbers is FALSE
Veteran Bollywood actress Waheeda Rehman, who is known for her graceful dancing, is being honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award for her significant contribution to the Indian cinema.
Claim :
A viral video shows a Bollywood actress dancing at the age of 85.Fact :
The woman seen in the video is not Waheeda Rehman, she is a dancer named Sunila Ashok.
eteran Bollywood actress Waheeda Rehman, who is known for her graceful dancing, is being honoured with the Dadasaheb Phalke Lifetime Achievement Award for her significant contribution to the Indian cinema.
Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting Mr. Anurag Thakur shared a post announcing this on X (Twitter).
Meanwhile, a video of a woman dancing to the tune of a famous song from the movie Guide, originally performed by Waheeda Rehman, is going viral with the claim that it shows Waheeda Rehman dancing at the age of 85.
Several users shared this video with captions like “Waheeda Rehman, an accomplished veteran Indian actress, dancing at age 85 on her song which she did when she was 28 years old. She has the same grace and elegance This year she is honored with the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, India’s highest achievement award in the field of Cinema”
Fact Check:
The claim is false. The woman dancing in the video is not Waheeda Rehman, but she is an artist named Sunila Ashok.
When observed carefully, one of the Facebook posts had comments stating that the woman in the video was not Waheeda Rehman. The users also shared a YouTube video link to the original video.
When clicked on the link shared, we found the original video shared by a YouTube channel named Mayookha with the title Mayookha – Aaj Phir Jeene ki Tamanna Hai (Dance Cover). This video was published in January 2022 and has over a million views.
When we checked out the About page of the YouTube channel, we found that the channel belonged to a dancer, Sunila Ashok.
Taking this as a cue, when we searched her name on Google we found the Instagram handle Mayookha_sunila. The bio of this handle confirms her name as Sunila Ashok, a dancer.
The handle shared the viral video with the caption “Woke up this morning to a flurry of messages from my family & friends. My video for ‘Aaj phir jeene ki Tamanna hai’ seems to have gone viral as Waheeda Rahman’s dance video! I am greatly honored to be compared to her and I am overwhelmed with all the love and appreciation I am getting from my viewers! Mayookha has only one important message - pursue your passion, irrespective of your age. It is a source of joy and contentment like nothing else
Hence, the viral video does not show the veteran Bollywood actress Waheeda Rehman. The claim is FALSE.
