Fact Check: Edited Boarding Pass Claiming Rahul Gandhi’s Bangkok Visit Goes Viral

New Delhi (Vishvas News): Amidst the Lok Sabha elections, a picture of a boarding pass purportedly issued in Rahul Gandhi’s name for a Bangkok flight dated June 5, 2024, is going viral. Vishvas News investigated the viral post and the investigation revealed that the viral boarding pass is misleading.  

What Is Going Viral

On June 3, 2024, Facebook user Rajesh Grewal ( Archive ) shared a photo of a boarding pass with Rahul Gandhi’s name and the destination Bangkok. Sharing this photo, he wrote, “Your fool has got a ticket booked for June 5 as well. Rahul Gandhi has booked a ticket to his grandmother’s house on June 5. School holidays have started, so it is a must to go to grandmother’s house.”

Vishvas News Investigation:

To verify the authenticity of this post, we first took a closer look at the picture. It shows a Vistara flight boarding pass from India to Bangkok, bearing Rahul Gandhi’s name. The date of departure on this boarding pass is June 5, 2024, which is a day after the Lok Sabha election results are announced. Notably, the boarding pass is for business class.

Upon investigation, we found that online boarding passes are typically issued 24-48 hours before the scheduled departure time. Hard copies like the one in the viral picture, are obtained only after completing the check-in at the airport counter.

Under these circumstances, we suspected that this boarding pass might be edited. Upon conducting a Google reverse image search, we discovered the same image of this boarding pass in a blog article featured in a post on ‘ Live from a Lounge ‘ on August 9, 2019, but the name of the passenger, destination, and the travel date on the boarding pass were different. This boarding pass had the name of Ajay Avtani, the founder and editor of this website and indicated a flight from Delhi to Singapore scheduled for August 6, 2019.

The similarities between the viral image and the boarding pass in this blog is evident in the collage below.

We reached out to Ajay Avtani, the author of the blog and founder of this website, for clarification on this issue While replying to our email, he confirmed that this picture is edited. The original boarding pass belonged to him.

We also reached out to Congress spokesperson Pranav Jha on this issue, who called it fake and said, “Boarding passes are not issued before 24 hours. The government is not doing anything to stop the spread of misinformation against opposition leaders. SM rules need to be implemented and those spreading fake news should be punished.”

The viral post was shared by a Facebook user named Rajesh Grewal and  according to his profile, the user is a resident of Bhiwani, Haryana.