Viral photo of PM Modi taking pictures with lens cover on is morphed

A photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is circulating on social media in which he can be seen clicking pictures with a DSLR camera with the lens cover on.

Twitter handles associated with the Congress party and its leaders shared the photo and took potshots at the prime minister. They claimed that he did not remove the cover of the camera lens while taking the photograph of recently brought Cheetahs.

On September 17, eight African cheetahs – five female and three male – were translocated from Namibia to India after the species were declared extinct over seven decades ago.

Mocking the prime minister, the official handle of the Maharashtra Congress Sev Dal shared the photo and wrote: "The digital cameras of the 1980s had no lens cover."

Click here to view the post and click here to access the archive.

Several other handles linked to the Congress party have shared the photo. Click here, here and here to access the archives.

The photo is being widely shared on Facebook, too.

Fact Check

NewsMeter noticed the following discrepancies in the photo.

1. The brand of the DSLR camera is Nikon, but the alphabets are in reverse order, which gave us the cue that the photo was horizontally reversed.

2. The brand on the cover reads Cannon which confirmed that the cover was added through digital alteration.

3. The brand name Canon on the cover reads clearly, and the brand name Nixon on the camera is pixelated.

Taking these cues, we performed a reverse image search of the photo and found a report by The Indian Express on Modi releasing Cheetahs in Kuno National Park. The report carries three photos of Modi with a DSLR camera, and none of it has a cover on the lens.

The report also has the original photograph which has been morphed.

Press Information Bureau (PIB) also released the same photograph.

It is evident that the photo being circulated is morphed. Hence, the claim is false.