Fact Check: Sonu Nigam asks Tejasvi Surya not to dub Kannada movies in Hindi? No, media reported the wrong account

Hyderabad: Singer Sonu Nigam recently sparked controversy after he compared the aggressive demands for Kannada songs to the Pahalgam terror attack during a concert in Bengaluru on April 25.

Meanwhile, several media outlets, including The Indian Express, The Times of India and The Economic Times, reported that the singer criticised Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tejasvi Surya for his remarks on a viral video showing a language dispute between a bank manager and a customer at a public sector bank.

In a post on X, Tejasvi Surya stated that the bank employee’s behaviour was ‘simply not acceptable,’ adding that individuals working in customer service should communicate with customers in a language they understand.

Responding to Surya’s post, Sonu Nigam allegedly commented, “Don’t dub Kannada movies in Hindi! Don’t release Kannada movies pan-India! Do you have the guts to say this to Kannada film stars, Mr. @Tejasvi_Surya, or are you just another language warrior?”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false, as the X account in question does not belong to singer Sonu Nigam, who has not been active on the platform for some time.

The account ‘@SonuNigamSingh’ identifies its owner in the bio as a criminal lawyer from Bihar.

We also found an Instagram account with the same handle, which featured a different individual and not the singer.

Further, we reviewed the official Instagram account of singer Sonu Nigam and found a post dated May 22, in which he called out media outlets, particularly The Times of India, for spreading misinformation.

The singer wrote: “How many times have I declared I am not on Twitter? Spreading misinformation in my name is only going to poison the minds of people who have loved me so much all these years…”

Similarly, in 2023, several media outlets attributed a tweet from the same criminal lawyer’s account to singer Sonu Nigam, claiming he had supported the ed-tech company Unacademy for firing one of its educators, Karan Sangwan.

However, NewsMeter, in a detailed investigation, found that the account ‘@SonuNigamSingh’ does not belong to the singer, who had quit X (formerly Twitter) in 2017.

Therefore, we conclude that media reports claiming singer Sonu Nigam slammed Tejasvi Surya over the Kannada language row are false.