Do we like Dhruv Rathee?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and real courage under pressure, but we found nothing on LGBTQ+ rights and some of his takes are contested.
Dhruv Rathee grew up in a small town in Haryana and went to Germany to study mechanical engineering. He found YouTube in 2014, started with travel vlogs, then noticed how many people swallowed whatever landed on YouTube and WhatsApp. So he pivoted to Hindi fact-checking and explainers, and by 2023 had nearly 13 million subscribers.
Taking on the government has cost him. TIME reported that his video on The Kerala Story drew threats against his wife, and that the government blocked another of his videos over a claimed map error. In 2024 he also had to rebut viral fake posts claiming he was Muslim and his wife was Pakistani, saying, “They have no answer to the videos I made so they're spreading these fake claims.”
The legal stuff is mostly fights over speech, not misconduct. BJP leader Suresh Nakhua sued him for defamation in a Delhi court in 2024 and Rathee told the court Nakhua “has a history of abusing public figures”. We found no ruling in the sources we read. In 2026 an advocate also flagged his video about Hindu gods and meat, and Google told the Delhi High Court it is now withheld in India.
On the harm test, nothing turned up. We found no attacks on women, migrants, LGBTQ+ people or the planet, and no anti-vax or conspiracy slide. He says his team checks each claim and publishes a resource paper for every video. He told TIME he hopes his videos “teach people tolerance, coexistence, and accepting each other's opinions”. The gap is that we couldn't find any video of his on LGBTQ+ or trans rights, so the pass is on absence.
The recent stoush is the big one. Rathee was due to speak at a Cockroach Janta Party protest at Jantar Mantar on 10 October, and Delhi Police detained him at home that morning. He says about 20 plain-clothes men took him away and he was cut off from his lawyer for 22 to 23 hours. Delhi Police say he was released at 3am Sunday. He has since alleged police and Intelligence Bureau staff are tailing him, which could not be independently verified.
He also showed his passport in a video after rumours he held a foreign one, saying, “I am an Indian citizen and always will be.” Whatever you make of his politics, being hauled off for planning to speak at a rally is a big deal. Where you land on the detail depends on whether you trust the police account or his.