Fact Check: Unnao rape case - Kuldeep Sengar garlanded outside Tihar Jail? No, image is AI-generated
An image claiming to show Kuldeep Sengar being welcomed with a garland at Tihar Jail entrance is going viral on social media.
By - M Ramesh Naik
Claim:The image shows Unnao rape case convict Kuldeep Sengar being welcomed with a garland.
Fact:The claim is false. The image is AI-generated.
Hyderabad: The Delhi High Court on December 23 suspended the life sentence of expelled BJP leader Kuldeep Singh Sengar in the 2017 Unnao rape case. The court granted him conditional bail pending appeal.
In this context, an image is circulating on social media claiming to show him being garlanded at the Tihar Jail entrance.
The image has been shared widely, with an X user posting it with the caption, “What kind of society is this, after all, that welcomes rapists by garlanding them?” (Translated from Hindi) (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The viral image is AI-generated and not an actual incident.
While the Delhi High Court suspended Sengar’s life sentence in the Unnao rape case on December 23, he remains in jail due to his ongoing 10-year sentence in the related custodial death case of the victim’s father, for which bail has not been granted.
No reports confirm his release or any such welcome ceremony.
Analysis of the image
On close analysis, several visual inconsistencies reveal that the image is synthetic.
There is a sparkle watermark in the bottom right corner, which is characteristic of the Google Gemini AI image generation tool. The figures’ proportions and shadows appear unnatural, with minor blending errors around the garlands and hands.
To further verify these observations, NewsMeter analysed the image using Hive Moderation, which flagged the image as AI-generated with 99.9% confidence scores.
The viral image claiming that Kuldeep Sengar was welcomed with a garland is not real. It is an AI-generated image.
Therefore, the claim is false.
