Will Smith was seen meditating in front of the Taj Mahal during his recent visit to India in April 2022.

A photograph of Will Smith meditating in front of the Taj Mahal captured in 2018 was incorrectly attributed to his India visit in April 2022.

A photograph of Will Smith meditating in front of the Taj Mahal captured in 2018 was incorrectly attributed to his India visit in April 2022.On March 27, 2022, Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock when the latter made a joke about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, at the 94th Academy Awards. This incident prompted memes, social media posts, and misinformation. Following Smith's first public appearance since the Oscars slap incident on April 23 in India, a Twitter post stated that as part of his 2022 India trip, Smith staged a photo of himself meditating in front of the mausoleum Taj Mahal in Agra. With the description that it was snapped after the Oscar slap event, the photo was retweeted over 3,000 times and liked by over 65,000 users.

On the other hand, the photograph of Smith meditating at the Taj Mahal was captured in 2018.

Through a reverse image search, we found that the photo of Smith meditating in front of the Taj Mahal was a screen grab from a GIF he uploaded on his official social media accounts in 2018, along with a description of the Taj Mahal. We also came across an Indian Express report stating that on October 10, 2018, Smith visited the Taj Mahal while in India to film a dance sequence for Karan Johar's Student of the Year 2. Smith's images, credited to APH Images, were included in the report, showing him wearing the same outfit as in the falsely captioned Twitter post but in different poses.

We also looked into whether the actor visited Agra during his recent trip to India in 2022. Even though Smith's trip to India was widely publicized as his first public appearance since the Oscar incident, there was no indication that he visited Agra when this fact check was written. Moreover, since Smith arrived in India on April 24, except for the speculations that he was in India for a spiritual exchange with the Hindu organization ISKCON, there have been no reports of him going out in public.

Contrary to the information, an ISKCON source speaking to Indian Express confirmed that no such spiritual exchange event was scheduled in Mumbai or India amid Smith's visit. Some reports also claimed that Smith met Sadhguru, an Indian yoga guru. But, Sadhguru's public relations team revealed that the two didn't meet because the yoga guru was on a global tour to promote the Save Soil Movement.

Furthermore, if Smith had visited the Taj Mahal, it would have received enormous coverage in the media. The image purported to depict Smith visiting the Taj Mahal in 2022 is an old image from 2018.