Several mainstream media outlets including Times Now, NDTV, Hindustan Times and News 18 fell for a viral staged video and falsely claimed a Bengaluru woman got her husband's name tattooed on her forehead.
BOOM spoke to the woman named Raksha, seen in the video, who confirmed that the video is staged. She did not get her forehead tattooed as suggested in the viral video.
The video shows a man tracing a woman's forehead with the name 'Satish' and then using a stencil to convert it into a tattoo.
Times Now reported the video and wrote, "Often those in relationships make each other feel special through loving gestures. It can be as small as getting dessert for your partner to buying them their favourite designer bag. However, one woman took it a little far. She decided to get her face tattooed with her husband's name to depict her love for him. The clip garnered mixed reactions on social media."
Hindustan Times also carried a report about the same video mentioning, "Wife gets her husband’s name tattooed on her forehead, leaves netizens in splits"
NDTV, too, curated reactions from different social media users about the video and published their report with a headline saying, "True Love": Bengaluru Woman Gets Her Husband's Name Tattooed On Forehead".
Other outlets such as Moneycontrol, Firstpost, News 18, India Times, Anandabazar Patrika, Indian Express Bangla also reported the video as a true incident.
Fact Check
The news reports carried the video crediting it to an Instagram account king_maker_tattoo_studio. A search for the same showed that the video had been uploaded by the account, which is run by a Bangalore-based tattoo studio on March 18, 2023.
Click here to view the post.
We then scanned through the other videos uploaded by that Instagram page and found that on multiple occasions it carried videos of the same woman after March 18, 2023 - the day she purpotedly got her forehead tattooed.
In the subsequent videos, the woman does not have any tattoo on her forehead.
One such post from May 21, 2023, featuring the same woman in a video can be seen below.
Click here to view the post.
Additionally we noticed that the video had tagged another account, queenmaker_of_tattoo where the display photo is of the same woman as in the viral video.
We scanned through this account and did not find any photo or video of the woman showing a tattoo on her forehead.
Taking a cue, we reached out to the tattoo parlour to verify the authenticity of the viral claim mentioned in the above-mentioned news reports.
Speaking to BOOM, the woman named Raksha refuted such claims and mentioned that the video is staged.
Raksha said, "It is not a real tattoo. We have not got it done. It is just an impression. We made it as a content."
A look at the handle that posted the video -- king_maker_tattoo_studio showed content related to tattos with several photos and videos showing their clients and the tattoos they inked and the piercings they got done.
The account belonging to Raksha, queenmaker_of_tattoo also posts similar content including reels where the woman is imitating popular Kannada actors.
In one such reel, posted on May 19, 2023, the woman Raksha can be seen clearly with no tattoo on her forehead.
We also noticed that the profile king_maker_tattoo_studio on its bio section mentions it as a tattoo training institute as well as a tattoo studio based out of Bangalore, Karnataka.