Fake news alert: Viral picture of Ghulam Nabi Azad with Amit Shah is morphed
A photo featuring Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Director of Research and Analysis Wing of India (R&AW) Samant Kumar Goel, and Ghulam Nabi Azad is doing rounds on social media. It is being claimed that Azad met Shah and Geol before quitting Congress.
By Md Mahfooz Alam Published on 15 Sept 2022 9:08 AM IST
Hyderabad: On August 26, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from Congress after five decades. In a scathing resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi, he called out Rahul Gandhi for "immaturity" and "demolishing the consultative mechanism" in the party.
Azad is floating his party in Jammu and Kashmir. Congress has accused him of working at the behest of the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).
Against this backdrop, a photo featuring Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Director of Research and Analysis Wing of India (R&AW) Samant Kumar Goel, and Ghulam Nabi Azad is doing rounds on social media. It is being claimed that Azad met Shah and Geol before quitting Congress.
"Ghulam Nabi Azad met Home Minister Amit Shah in presence of Samant Kumar long before he left the Congress. He was (Modified) when he received Padma Bhushan award, the third highest civilian award from the PM, and was promised a Rajya Sabha seat," wrote a Twitter user who posted the photo. (Translated)
Several Twitter and Facebook users have shared the photo with a similar claim.
Click here, here and here to access the posts.
Fact Check
NewsMeter performed a reverse image of the photo. We came across an old tweet by Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis with a similar image. Shah, Fandnavis, and Micheal Lobo, an MLA from Goa, can be seen seated in the picture.
On horizontally flipping the viral photo, we found it identical to the image posted by Fadnavis.
In the collage, we have highlighted the similarities for a better understanding of our readers.
Besides many similarities, the major highlight is wrist positions and feet positions circled in green colour. We also observed that the bands on Goel's wrist in the morphed photo are identical to the bands on Fadnavis's wrist.
An old photo of Devendra Fadnavis and Micheal Lobo meeting Amit Shah has been digitally altered to include Samant Kumar Goel and Ghulam Nabi Azad. Hence the viral photo is misleading.
