Video claiming Shah Rukh Khan joined Delhi protest is actually from 2023 Ganesh Chaturthi Festival in Mumbai
A video has been circulating on social media claiming that Shah Rukh Khan, famous Bollywood actor, joined a protest in Delhi demanding the resignation of the education minister and reform of a corrupt and broken education system. However, Dismislab’s fact-check found that the video is not from the Delhi protest, but rather footage recorded at a pandal in Mumbai during the 2023 Ganesh Chaturthi festival.
On 22 July, the Facebook page “M F A News” posted a video with the caption, “Bollywood King Shah Rukh Khan has joined the anti-Modi protest in Delhi.” At the time this report was published, the post had been viewed more than 131,000 times and shared more than 450 times. The same video, with an identical caption, was also posted from an account named “Mehedi Hasan,” and was viewed 80,000 times and shared 746 times.
A reverse image search of keyframes led to multiple videos of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival on Instagram and YouTube. The Bollywood-focused Instagram page “voompla” published the video on 21 September 2023, with a caption stating that Shah Rukh was seen coming out with his bodyguards after visiting Lalbagucha Raja. This video is an exact match with the video circulating on Facebook.
A video of the same event was also published by the YouTube channel “HT City” on 22 September 2023, which stated that Shah Rukh Khan had gone with his youngest son AbRam to visit the Ganesh idol at Lalbagucha Raja. The scene between the 27-second and 51-second mark of this video exactly matches the video being circulated with the claim of Shah Rukh Khan joining the protest.
A report by The Indian Express dated 21 September 2023 contains the same information. According to the report, on the third day of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival, Shah Rukh went to seek blessings at Mumbai’s popular Ganesh pandal Lalbagucha Raja, accompanied by his son AbRam and manager Pooja Dadlani. While shielding his son from the crowd of devotees, he waved to greet them, and it was this scene that later spread on social media.
Ganesh Chaturthi is a Hindu festival marking the birth of the deity Ganesha, celebrated for up to 10 days, mainly in the state of Maharashtra. Bollywood celebrities, including Shah Rukh Khan, are frequent visitors to the festival each year.
In other words, a video of Shah Rukh Khan visiting a pandal in Mumbai on the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi more than two years ago is being falsely presented as footage of his participation in the recent Delhi protest. Shah Rukh Khan has no connection to this protest.
Notably, protests took place under the banner of the “Cockroach Janata Party” (CJP) in India demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over allegations of educational system reform failures and the leaking of question papers for the all-India entrance examination. According to media reports, on 20 July (2026), thousands of protesters marched toward the Parliament building in Delhi, resulting in clashes with police. In protest against this police crackdown on students, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi led a protest march toward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence the following day, Tuesday (July 21).
