Fact Check: Little girl imitating Mirabai Chanu's silver medal Tokyo Olympic lift is NOT Sathish Sivalingam’s daughter

In his latest tweet, Sathish Sivalingam has cleared that he is not related to the little girl in any way and the purpose of sharing the clip on the Twitter was to encourage young girls to choose weightlifting as a sport.

File image (Source: Twitter)

Amid Mirabai Chanu's silver medal victory at the Tokyo Olympics, a video of a little girl lifting weights and imitating Chanu as if she were receiving the medal on the Olympics stage is going viral. The small clip shows the girl first powdering her hands, bowing down to the barbell, and then lifting it. She then waves around while wearing a medal as the television in the background shows the actual footage of Chanu's weightlift.

Social Media users termed the little girl as 'Junior Mirabai' after seeing the lovely video and till now, the video has been viewed over 500,000 times on Twitter.

Notably, the video was shared by another Indian weightlifter Sathish Sivalingam and many news organisations termed the girl in the video as his daughter. However, in his latest tweet, Sathish has cleared that he is not related to the child in any way and the purpose of sharing the clip on the micro-blogging site was to encourage young girls to choose weightlifting as a sport.

I'm Indian weightlifter sathish sivalingam, here to inform about the article that was wrongly published on July 27, 2021. The article carried misinformation on the subject stating "Indian weightlifter Sathish Sivalingam shared a video of his daughter who mimicked Chanu’s silver . — sathish sivalingam weightlifter (@imsathisholy) July 27, 2021

all the website to remove the articles that stated the young girl as my daughter.This has nothing to relate with my personal life. Hoping for the best career for this young girl — sathish sivalingam weightlifter (@imsathisholy) July 27, 2021

Sivalingam had earlier shared a clip of a little girl mimicking Chanu. He captioned the video, "Junior @mirabai_chanu this s called the inspiration."

Later, Mirabai Chanu herself reshared the video and captioned it, ‘So cute. Just love this.’

So cute. Just love this. https://t.co/IGBHIfDrEk — Saikhom Mirabai Chanu (@mirabai_chanu) July 26, 2021

It is worth mentioning that, Chanu, on July 24, opened India's medal tally in the Tokyo Olympics after she bagged a silver medal in the women's 49kg category. During her four successful attempts, the weightlifter lifted a total of 202 kg, including 87 kg in a snatch and 115 in clean and jerk.