This video does not show Dhirendra Shastri of Bageshwar Dham wrestling

Hyderabad: A video of two men wrestling is circulating on social media and people are claiming that it shows Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, a priest of Bageshwar Dham temple located in Madhya Pradesh, knocking down a man in a wrestling match.

A Twitter user shared the video and wrote, “Even in the Akhada, see how the priest of Bageshwar Dham, Pandit Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, beats his opponent.” (Translated) (Archive)

Click here to see the post.

Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, a self-styled godman, has been in the news recently for performing various “miracles” at his religious gathering. He has a large number of followers who believes that Shastri possesses miraculous powers. He is the head of the Bageshwar Dham temple in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video shows Pakistani wrestler Ghulam Hussain Pathan and not Shastri knocking down a wrestler.

On performing a reverse image of the video’s keyframe, we found an extended version of the video published by Pakistan’s Sachal TV on 6 November 2020. According to the caption, the video shows Ghulam Hussain Pathan playing Malakhra—an ancient Sindhi form of wrestling.

Further, we searched for Ghulam Hussain Pathan and found his interview on NTV News HD. In the interview, he said his father was also a wrestler, and he has been passionate about wrestling since childhood. He also mentioned that he started wrestling at the age of 14 and was one of the youngest wrestlers in Sind.

We also found his Instagram page where he has posted many videos of him wrestling (Malakhra).

From this, it is evident that the viral video shows Pakistani wrestler Ghulam Hussain Pathan in a wrestling match. Hence, we conclude that the claim that the video shows Dhirendra Krishna Shastri of Bageshwar Dham knocking down a wrestler is false.