The crazy world of the internet has now killed veteran Kannada actor Doddanna! Some miscreants have spread false rumours that the actor passed away on Wednesday, 5 May, forcing him to give a statement over his health.
I am Hale and Health
Doddanna himself has clarified that with the blessings of crores of Kannadigas he is healthy. "Some miscreants have posted my pictures with a 'RIP' message, indicating that I am dead, on social media sites. I am getting plenty of calls from my well-wishers and media friends enquiring about my health.
"I want to tell all my friends and well-wishers that I am at home, hale and healthy. People should not worry about me," the actor claimed.
Doddanna is a senior actor who started his journey with Koodi Balidare Swarga Sukha in 1981. Since then, he has worked in supporting and villain roles in 150 movies. The actor has shared screen space with many big stars from Sandalwood that includes Dr Vishnuvardhan, Ambareesh, Ravichandran, Shivaraj Kumar, Darshan, and Upendra.
This is not the first time, such death hoax have sent shocking waves to fans in Karnataka. Earlier, there were fake reports on S Janaki, Dwarakeesh, and many others.
Last year, former Bigg Boss Kannada contestant and TV actress Tejaswini Prakash faced a similar situation when some YouTube channels had spread fake death news about her.
Reacting to those fake reports, Tejaswini had written the below post on her Facebook account.
A few youtube news channels/social media pages/Shareit News links are sharing a news item with the above (or similar) thumbnails/headings since more than a month now.
Since the time this news came up on the social media, I have been getting a lot of calls from my relatives, friends and well-wishers enquiring about me. I would like to hereby convey to all of you that the above news is fake. I ignored it for quite a long time now, but then I felt I should voice out about it.
When you read through/watch through the news item, they dont speak about my death, as per their headline! Hence they might escape a legal suit too.
Such click-baits/social media news might give them extra clicks, but one thing they forget is, what would be impact of it on my family.
I feel there has to be a sense of responsibility amongst such social media news-creators and they should not resort to such ways of making news.