Fact Check | The Reserve Bank of India has not issued a new ₹ 7 coin honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni

A post going viral on social media claims that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to issue a new ₹ 7 coin to honour cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his contributions to Indian cricket, especially his leadership. Let’s verify the claim through this article.

A post going viral on social media (here, and here) claims that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to issue a new ₹ 7 coin to honour cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his contributions to Indian cricket, especially his leadership. Let’s verify the claim through this article.

To verify the claim, we checked the official website of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as the RBI publishes circulars about new coins or notes whenever they are released. However, the website does not show any recent announcements about a ₹ 7 coin honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The press release section of the site does not include any information on this particular coin. Additionally, the list of coins currently in circulation is also available on the RBI website.

Commemorative coins are special coins issued to mark significant events or personalities and are classified as a Non-Circulating Legal Tender (NCLT), meaning they are not used in general circulation. The list of Commemorative coins issued by the Government of India to date can be found here. The ₹ 7 coin, allegedly honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, has not been officially released. There is no mention of it on the website of the Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Limited (SPMCIL), which operates branches in Mumbai, Kolkata, Noida, and Hyderabad and manufactures all coins.

We then conducted a reverse image search of the screenshot from the viral post, which led us to the Instagram handle @thetathyanews. The viral post was shared on 03 November 2024. The description of the post revealed that it is not real news. It is a satire intended solely for entertainment purposes.

We noticed that such satirical news are frequently shared on @thetathyanews’ Instagram handle. The bio revealed that everything posted on this page is pure Satire and not real news.

To sum up, the Reserve Bank of India has not issued a ₹ 7 coin honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

Claim: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to issue a ₹ 7 coin honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni for his contributions to Indian cricket. 

Fact: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has not announced the release of a ₹ 7 coin honouring cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and there is no official circular in this regard. A digitally created image of such a coin, featuring MS Dhoni’s face, was created by the Instagram handle @thetathyanews which frequently posts satirical news. There is also no mention of it on the Security Printing & Minting Corporation of India Limited (SPMCIL) website which manufactures all coins. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

This story was originally published by Factly, and republished by Deccan Herald as part of the Shakti Collective.