Fact Check: Viral message from Dr. Devi Shetty saying Puneeth Rajkumar died because he was "too fit" is hoax

The viral message reads, "In the last few years, I have lost at least 8 to 9 people known to me personally, and a few celebrities too, who were in their 40s who died because of doing too much to be 'fit'. Unfortunately, they only looked fit, six-packs and all. Today Puneeth Rajkumar gets added to this list. In anything in life, MODERATION is the mantra. Any extreme of zero or 100 is not correct."

A longer version of this message is also going viral on Facebook. Click here, here, here, here, and here to view the viral message on Facebook

Fact Check

The claim is false.

NewsMeter searched for any such statement issued by Dr. Devi Shetty. We found a video tweeted by Times Now on 29 October after the death of actor Puneeth Rajkumar where Dr. Devi Shetty, the chairman and executive director of Narayana Health, had participated in a panel discussion.

At the start of the panel discussion, Dr. Shetty says he will not talk about the actor's death. He explains that Indians are genetically three times more vulnerable to heart attacks than Europeans. Every 40-year-old male Indian is a heart patient unless proven otherwise.

Narayana Health, in a tweet on 30 October, had clarified that the viral message being attributed to Dr. Shetty was fake. "Narayan Health would like to clarify that this forwarded message supposedly from Dr. Devi Shetty, is fake and did not originate from his office. Any reference or attribution made to him is incorrect," it had tweeted.

Ujjawal Trivedi, a senior journalist and motivational speaker, had uploaded a video on Facebook explaining that the viral message was a hoax.

It is therefore evident that the viral message claiming actor Puneeth Rajkumar died because he was "too fit" is a hoax and has wrongly been attributed to Dr. Devi Shetty. The doctor has issued no such statement.