On October 22,2021, a claim started to circulate online that an international taekwondo referee of Indian origin has converted to Islam in Iran. The people who posted this claim also said that the man is an officer of the Indian air force and posted his pictures along with it.
Fact-Check:
Upon reverse searching the image, we found an article posted by Pars Today which seems to be the first source of this information. In the article, it is mentioned that the the Iran based news organisation Tasnim News Agency covered this event stating that India’s International Taekwondo Referee Sundarmani Patel converted to Islam while attending a Taekwondo competition in Iran.
However, when we checked Tasnim News’ website, we were unable to find any matches for this claim. Sundarmani Patel is indeed a taekwondo referee but not one of his socials have been updated with this ‘news’.
Additionally. We checked to see if any international taekwondo tournaments were taking place in Iran this month but failed to find any.
Therefore, this claim is fake.
