FACT CHECK: Is This the Photo of Virat Kohli & Anushka Sharma's Newborn Baby? Find Out the Truth...

Photos of newborn kids of celebrities and prominent families attract a lot of attention on social media. Sometimes unrelated photos get viral as photos of newborn children get viral as kids of celebrities. Recently we did a couple of fact checks in Sinhala on photos wrongly claimed to be of newborns of Rajapaksa family. You can read these fact checks by clicking here and here.

On a similar note, Factcrescendo did a fact check on some photos which were claimed as photos of Indian Cricket team captain Virat Kohli and Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma’s newborn baby. We found that these images were not of Virat and Anushka’s child. Let’s check out the details…

Social Media Posts:

A #birthdaychallenge Facebook post with the caption “Virat Kohli and Anushka with their New born baby girl” was shared by Kvn Siva Goutham and a number of other Facebook users as seen below.

Facebook link | Archived link

Given below are similar posts shared by Facebook users who mistook these photos to be of Virat Kohli’s newborn child.

Fact Check

First, we performed a reverse image search on each of the three photos that were included in the photo collage.

Google reverse image search results of the first photograph in which a woman was holding a newborn photo was uploaded to iStock photo website on 3^rd May 2016 as seen below.

Istockphoto | archived link

Second image in which a man seemed to be holding a baby draped in cloth was found on a blog published in 2018 as seen below.

Blog post | Archived link

In the last photo where Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma appear as holding a baby, we can observe difference in the skin tones of their faces and bodies. Thus, it looks an obvious case of Photoshop. To verify that the photo is edited, we again ran a reverse image search on the photo.

Reverse image search results revealed that the image was taken in 2010, when Bollywood actor Karisma Kapoor and Sanjay Kapoor welcomed their son Kiaan Raj Kapoor, as seen in the report given below.

Indian tv news | Archived link

Faces of both Karisma and Sanjay have been replaced with Anushka and Virat's faces respectively to claim that the image was the latter couple with their newborn.

In an Instagram post on January 11^th Virat Kohli had mentioned that both Anushka and baby girl were in good health and requested fans and well-wishers to respect their privacy.

Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma were snapped for the first time outside a clinic in Mumbai few days ago. They greeted the Media and Photographers. Anushka Sharma even thanked the media for respecting their privacy. Bollywood Now

Name of the newborn baby girl or her photos with the couple have not yet been published anywhere.

Conclusion

From our investigation, it is clear that old and unrelated photos are shared as photos of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma’s newborn daughter. Photos of the newborn baby girl have not yet been published anywhere till now.