A claim has surfaced on the Internet, showing Indian sprinter Hima Das breaking legendary Milka Singh’s record recently. The caption associated with the post suggests that because Hima Das is a member of a Scheduled Caste community, all media news channels disregarded her accomplishments.
The caption of the post reads: “हिमा दास ने महान धावक सरदार मिल्खा सिंह जी का रिकॉर्ड तोड़ दिया पर मीडिया चुप हैं। क्योंकि “हिमा दास ” बहुजन समाज( 85% ) अनुसूचित जाति से हैं ।” (English translation: “Hima Das broke the record of great sprinter Sardar Milkha Singh ji, but the media is silent. Because “Hima Das” Bahujan Samaj (85%) belongs to Scheduled Caste.”)
The link to the post can be seen here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile did the fact-check, and found it to be fake.
With appropriate keywords on Google, we found a report by The Hindu published on August 6, 2022. According to the report, “Star Indian sprinter Hima Das failed to qualify for the final of the women’s 200m at the Commonwealth Games.” The report further suggests that she finished third in semi-final 2 with a timing of 23.42 seconds.
According to the Olympics website, Milkha Singh won Gold medal by running a 400-metre race in 47 seconds at Rome Olympics held in 1960. He also ran 200m in 20.7 seconds in the Indo-Pak meet held in Lahore in 1960. In the 4x400m relay, his timing was 3 m 10.2 seconds. If compared to Milkha Singh’s record, Hima Das still lags behind. For the 200m race, Hima Das’ timing was 22.88 seconds, for the 400m race, it was 50.97 seconds. She recently ran a 100-metre race in 11.43 seconds at National Inter-State Championships 2022 in Chennai.
We found that former athlete Paramjeet Singh broke Milkha Singh’s 38-year-old national record in 400 metres at a domestic meet in 1998.
Hence, we can ascertain that Hima Das has not broken Milka Singh’s record and the viral claim is fake.
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