Claim
An old news clip from 2021 showing a man addressing a crowd and speaking about boycotting Reliance products misidentifies him as the Muslim founder of wellness and pharmaceutical company Himalaya. The video is viral with the caption, "This person is owner of the cosmetic brand #Himalya and is a Muslim. You can understand his pain. Do you know , that the cosmetic brand HIMALAYA is a Muslim owned company and 98% of their staffs are Muslims..? And we Hindus keep on buying the product of Himalaya. Who knows whether they spit into their products while manufacturing ..."
Fact
BOOM had previously debunked this video when it went viral with the same claim in March 2022 and July 2021. We noticed the logo of 'Times Express Voice of Democracy' on the top right corner of the video. Taking a cue from the speech's content and the logo, we ran a Youtube search and found a longer version of the news clip uploaded on January 25, 2020. The Hindi title of the clip translates to 'Stop saying Hindustani - Bhanu Pratap Singh created an uproar amid Muslims regarding CAA'. The clip was taken during an anti-CAA protest in Mustafabad, Delhi. A keyword search of Bhanu Pratap Singh led us to other videos of the man and his Twitter and Facebook handles where he identified as a Delhi-based advocate and not the founder of Himalaya. Further, we also searched for more information on Himalaya's website and saw that its founder, Mohammed Manal, passed away in 1986. We also looked up Himalaya's current CEO, Shailendra Malhotra, and found that his facial features were completely different from the man in the viral video.