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Friday March 29, 2024

Factcheck: No, this is not a real photo of India’s Rahul Gandhi waiting to meet PM Imran

The claim is false; the image has been doctored from an original photo of a meeting between Pakistan’s Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Khan on April 4, 2019.

By AFP
April 12, 2019

Multiple Facebook and Twitter posts contain a photo which they claim shows Indian opposition politicians, including Indian National Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, waiting to meet Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan at his official residence in Islamabad.

The claim is false; the image has been doctored from an original photo of a meeting between Pakistan’s Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Khan on April 4, 2019.

The doctored image has been shared more than 4,500 times since it was published here on April 7, 2019 in a Facebook post which claims it shows the Indian opposition politicians sitting in the corner of a room while the Pakistani prime minister talks to the country's army chief.

The misleading post’s caption says in the regional Indian language of Kannada: “If you vote for Congress, you’re voting for Pakistan. Look at the picture, the slaves of Pakistan are sitting in the corner.”

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

The image purportedly shows opposition politicians West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Indian National Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, Punjab's state minister for tourism and culture Navjot Singh Sidhu, and MP for Bihar Shatrughan Sinha sitting on chairs behind Imran Khan.

The doctored image also appears to show Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal performing an Islamic prayer outside the window.

The misleading image with similar captions has been posted multiple times on Facebook, and on Twitter.

A Google reverse image search found the photo has been doctored from an original image posted on the Government of Pakistan’s official Twitter page @pid_gov on April 4, 2019.

Below is a screenshot of the original image posted on Twitter:

The caption in Urdu along with the original image translates as: “Prime Minister Imran Khan met Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. They exchanged views on important security related issues during the meeting.”

The original image was widely used by Pakistani media in their coverage of the meeting.

Rahul Gandhi was visiting the south Indian state of Kerala’s Wayanad district to submit his election nomination papers to local authorities on April 4, 2019.

Below is a April 4, 2019 tweet from his official Twitter account containing pictures of him submitting nomination papers and campaigning for votes.

A reverse image search on Yandex found multiple other photographs showing Prime Minister Imran Khan meeting with different dignitaries in the same room, with the same four empty chairs in the background.

Below is a screenshot of images in the Yandex search results: