Fact Check: Amul Butter raid visuals are from Mumbai, not Delhi; old news used for misleading post

New Delhi (Vishvas News): Amul has been a household name for years, but the iconic Indian brand fell prey to misinformation recently. Viral posts on social media said a raid to bust a fake butter-making gang, which was misusing the Amul name, was carried out in Jahangirpuri, Delhi.

However, Vishvas News, in its investigation, found that the raid was conducted in Mumbai in December 2018 and not in Delhi. Hence, the claim proved to be misleading.

Claim:

Facebook user Ashok Kumar Raj’s page posted (archive link) on January 9, 2020: “Fake Amul Butter being made in a illegal factory in Jahangir Puri, Delhi.”

The post was recently reshared by another user, Mayank Srivastava, on Facebook.

Investigation:

Vishvas News first used Google open search and identified another similar claim, which claimed that duplicate ‘Made in China’ butter has entered the Indian market.

Next, we did a Google reverse image search and found many news reports that identified the claim as being from Mumbai, not Delhi.

Mirror Now reported and posted a YouTube video that talks about how a gang that had made 1,000 kg of fake butter was busted in Thane, Mumbai.

International Business Times reported that the Thane police seized 1,000 kg of fake butter using the Amul name during the raid, and five people were arrested.

News aggregator InShorts also reported, “Police have seized 1,000 kilograms of adulterated butter being packed in Amul packaging for sale after raiding a factory at Maharashtra’s Ghodbunder village. Five arrests were made at the factory during the raid that the police conducted after receiving information from a man. Reports said the spurious butter was usually sold to small eateries and nearby sandwich makers.”

ABP Live also reported that the gang was busted by a team led by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Atul Kulkarni from the Bhayander area under the Kashimira Road police station limits.

To confirm, Vishvas News contacted Atul Kulkarni on LinkedIn and then directly on a call, over which he told us that the viral video was from his previous raid in Mumbai. He also shared the link to a news report from December 2018 that had his interview.

Currently, Atul Kulkarni, an IPS officer, is the Superintendent of Police, Osmanabad district (renamed as Dharashiv).

Upon scanning the social media profile of the user who’d shared the misleading claim, we found that he is a chef and is followed by more than 18,000 people on Facebook. His bio reads: “My OFFICIAL Page attempts to project excerpts from the Professional, Non Professional & Social parts of the Daily Life of a Chef.”