Fact Check: Viral Hospital Photos of Rashmika Mandanna Are Fake
Social media is abuzz (here, here, and here) with a collage of actress Rashmika Mandanna featuring photos of her apparently lying on a hospital bed. According to the posts sharing these photos, the ‘Pushpa’ actress is allegedly in a critical condition due to a sudden illness. We fact-check this claim through this article.
An archived version of the viral post can be found here.
Claim: Photos of Rashmika Mandanna showing her in critical condition in a hospital.
Fact: The viral photos are edited and unrelated to Rashmika Mandanna. There are no news reports to validate the claim that she has been hospitalized recently due to a sudden illness. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a keyword search to find out if any media outlets have reported on Rashmika Mandanna’s health issues. This search did not yield any credible news reports.
We then performed a reverse image search using the screenshots of the viral collage depicting a person on a hospital bed. This search revealed (here and here) that both the photos do not feature Rashmika Mandanna.
The wide-angle photo of a person on a hospital bed is actually from 2018 and shows Laura Avila. News reports (here, here, and here) from 2018 featured the original photo of her lying on a hospital bed while she was undergoing treatment for brain damage. She went into a coma (died later) after a plastic surgery went wrong.
Further, the close-up photo of Rashmika seen in the viral collage has been digitally edited. The original photo shows TV presenter Nicki Chapman on a hospital bed after undergoing brain surgery. News Reports (here, here, and here) from 2019 featured this photo. This photo was edited to make it look like Rashmika.
Additionally, we found that Rashmika had posted pictures of herself with a leg cast on 11 January 2025 on Instagram. She explained that she got injured in a gym.
(This story was originally published by Factly, as part of the Shakti Collective. Except for the headline/excerpt/opening introduction para, this story has not been edited by Deccan Chronicle staff.)
