‘It was his dream to work with Kapil Sharma’: Friends, family remember YouTuber Devraj Patel

On Tuesday morning, Dubey and a group of six to seven friends, stood outside the mortuary of a government hospital in Mekahara to take Patel’s body back to his village in Mahasamund district. His friends and family members told The Indian Express that Patel’s journey from the remote village of Dappali to YouTube popularity was full of ups and downs.

Dubey has been with Patel right from the beginning of his YouTube journey, which started in August 2020.

In 2020, Dubey saw the viral meme where Patel’s line,”Dil se bura lagta hai”, had caught the attention of netizens. As both are from Mahasamund district, Dubey contacted Patel and the two, along with another friend, stayed on rent in Raipur city to pursue their careers.

“He was like my little brother. I made the YouTube channel for him. People loved his lehja (tone) and innocence. He used to argue a lot with us, and moments later, we were laughing and joking. We were strict with him and always motivated him,” Dubey said.

“When he started out, he got scared because he would get abusive messages,” Dubey said, “But he had made another ‘dil se bura lagta hai’ video, which was posted online by others and went viral. Taking advantage of that, we made another video soon after, on Raksha Bandhan, where he was telling girls, ‘rakhi mat bando dil se bura lagta hai,’” said Dubey.

Patel was the youngest of three children. His father is a small-time farmer.

In childhood, he suffered from nephrotic syndrome, which affects the kidneys. Jamray Patel, his cousin from Korea district, said, “He had gained weight due to this syndrome. There have been instances in the past when he faced near death experiences. But in the last seven years, he has been taking treatment and had lost a lot of weight, and was looking fit. But then this happened.”

According to family and friends, Patel’s life had taken a turn for the better recently. He completed his BA degree this month, and had also been coming up with more jokes and content by himself, gaining more confidence.

“The last four months, he was growing wonderfully. He loved when people recognised him and surrounded him to click photos,” said Dubey.

For Patel, the highest point of his career was acting with YouTube star Bhuvan Bam in the comedy web series ‘Dhindora’, which premiered in 2021. As a part of that, he got the chance to go to Mumbai and meet popular comedians such as Tanmay Bhatt and Zakir Khan, among others.

“His happiest day was the premier of ‘Dhindora’. He loved it when people recognised him. But the funny part was that he could not face the media that day as he was suffering from motion sickness. We were all laughing as he was so excited to meet the press, but could not speak even a word when they asked him questions. He had said, ‘If I speak, I will vomit’,” Dubey recalled.

With more than 4 lakh subscribers on his channel, he had been awarded a Silver Play Button from YouTube. Overall, he had garnered 8.80 crore views in two years.

“When he was in college, he did a part-time job in which he earned Rs 5,000. Last year, there was one month when his videos got their highest spikes and he ended up making $500 (around Rs 40,000) from YouTube,” said Dubey.

His plan was to shift base to Mumbai. “We were working on two characters, Deva the Don and Deva Bazooka. We were thinking of characters that we could pitch to the makers of The Kapil Sharma Show. As Devraj had made several contacts in Mumbai, we were saving up money to shift base to Mumbai,” Dubey said.

He has also featured in multiple government advertisements and has worked in a Chhattisgarhi movie, which is yet to be released.

On Monday afternoon, Patel had travelled to New Raipur to enjoy the weather and shoot a reel. It was on his way home from there that he met with the accident.