Well he may have been a bit misinformed but he was mostly right.
Chitra indica was coonsidered to be the largest softshell turtle for a long time.
(by some measures the largest frehwater turtle)
Recently Chira chitra was described (grows much larger) and some claimed it to be just indica. I believe the current taxonomy has them as Chitra indica indica and Chitra indica chitra (someone please correct me if i am wrong)
to get an idea of how big is big see the sixth photo down on this page:
chitra researcher's homepage
And they get bigger than that too.
Chitra chitra has now been bred and raised in captivity to fantastic proportions.
There's also at least one undescribed chitra species from the subcontinent.
But no, the guy was crazy or lying.
see for example:
