Fact Check: Woman in the Army uniform in viral photo is not Seema Haider

Hyderabad: A collage of two photos, one showing a woman in Army uniform and the other of a Pakistani woman, Seema Haider, is going viral on social media.

Seema has made nationwide headlines recently for travelling from Pakistan to Dubai to Nepal and illegally sneaking into India for an Indian man, who she reportedly met in 2019 on the online shooting game PUBG. She is under investigation for allegedly being a Pakistani spy.

Users sharing the collage claim that the woman in the Army uniform is ‘Sayema Rahman’, who was promoted by the intelligence bureau of Pakistan and sent to India as Seema Haider.

Fact Check

We cropped the collage and performed a reverse image search of the woman in the Army uniform. The search led us to an article titled “Women in Tamil Nadu Police complete 50 years.” The article carried the same photo of the woman in uniform who is identified as Usha Rani Narendra, the first woman SI in Tamil Nadu. The article also mentioned that Usha Rani Narendra was a special invitee when the police museum was inaugurated in 2021 in Tamil Nadu.

The Times of India used the same image of Usha Rani Narendra in a report titled “First woman sub-inspector shares space with Tamil Nadu CM at police museum inaugural”, published September 29, 2021.

According to the report, Usha Rani was among 21 of the country’s first woman sub-inspector of police. She was directly recruited as an SI in 1973 and also worked as a chief security officer for former prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Hindu Tamil also used Usha Rani’s image in a report about the Golden Jubilee of Tamil Nadu’s women police.

Hence, we conclude that the viral image does not show Seema Haider in an Army uniform. The claim is false.