Fact Check: Viral photo showing a photographer with Prime Minister during his visit to Central Vista project site is edited

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A picture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going viral on social media, in which he is seen walking. A photographer can also be seen in this viral picture. When Vishvas News checked this photo, we found that this picture is edited. This picture of Prime Minister Modi is from 26 September, when he visited the construction site of the new Parliament building under Central Vista Project. In this picture, the photographer who is seen lying on the ground and taking a photo in front of the Prime Minister has been added separately.

Claim

Many users are sharing this morphed photo on Facebook, one of them is user ‘Puran Singh’. Sharing the photo, the user wrote, ‘Poor photographer…. He must also be wondering where I got stuck’.

View the archived version of the post here.

Investigation

We started our investigation by searching the photo using Google reverse image Search tool. During our search, we found this edited photo on many social media platforms. However, this picture of Modi with the photographer did not appear on any credible website.

We further investigated by cropping Modi’s image from this photo and then performed the Google reverse image search. In the search, we found the original photo on many reliable websites. The original photo has been uploaded on the News18 website on 26 September 2021. According to the information given here, this is a picture of when Prime Minister Modi recently visited the construction site of the new Parliament building. In the original photo, we did not see any photographer taking the picture. This photo was credited to News18. Therefore, this picture is real.

Taking the investigation further, we cropped the photographer’s image from the viral picture and found this photo on many websites in Google results.

This picture was also found on Pixabay According to the information given here it was uploaded on January 1, 2015.

The difference between the viral and the original picture can be seen here.

From the investigation so far, it was proved that this picture is edited. However, we contacted Shekhar Yadav, Senior Photographer of New Indian Express and asked him about the protocols for photographing the Prime Minister. We also shared the viral photo with him. And he told us that it doesn’t happen that any photographer ever comes close to taking a photo of the Prime Minister to such an extent and starts taking photos lying down from the front. Although government photographers often take very close-up photos, that happens in rare cases.

Vishvas News did social scanning of Facebook user Puran Singh who shared the viral post. We found that 128 people follow the user. Apart from this, the user’s profile is locked and no information is public.

Conclusion: When Vishvas News checked this photo, we found that this picture is edited. This picture of Prime Minister Modi is from 26 September, when he visited the construction site of the new Parliament building under Central Vista Project. In this picture, the photographer who is seen lying on the ground and taking a photo in front of the Prime Minister has been added separately.

Tags

• edited Photo
• Parliament
• PM Modi