Fact Check: Viral post falsely claims Rahul Gandhi met maker of BBC documentary

New Delhi (Vishvas News): As controversy rages over the BBC series ‘India: The Modi Question’, a picture of Rahul Gandhi is being shared on social media with the claim that he is standing with the makers of the documentary.

Vishvas News in its investigation found that the people standing behind Rahul Gandhi are not the makers of the documentary. The first person seen standing with Gandhi in the photo is former UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and the second person is Sam Pitroda, former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s advisor.

Claim:

Sharing the viral picture on January 27, 2023, Facebook user Bhushan Gosavi wrote in the caption in English, “Rahul Gandhi with BBC editor earlier & Now BBC has screened disputed Anti Indian documentary film…”

The content of the post is written here as it is. View the archived version of this post here. Other users are also sharing this claim on social media. Sharing the viral picture, other users wrote: Rahul Gandhi with BBC documentary producer.

Investigation:

To know the truth of the viral picture, we searched the photo using Google reverse image tool. We found this picture in a report of Amar Ujala. The report was published on May 24, 2022. According to the report, “Rahul Gandhi during his visit to London met British MP Jeremy Corbyn.” A picture of this meeting was shared by the Congress on Twitter. This picture was taken during that meeting.

According to a report published by ‘The Tribune India’ on May 24, 2022, the first person seen standing with Gandhi in the photo is former UK Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and the second person is Sam Pitroda, advisor to former PM Manmohan Singh.

Hindustan Live, India Today and Aaj Tak have also published this report.

During investigation, we found the viral picture posted on the official Twitter handle of Congress. The picture had been shared on May 23, 2022, and was about Rahul Gandhi’s visit to London.

We started scouring the social media accounts of Sam Pitroda and Jeremy Corbyn, and found the viral picture on Pitroda’s official Twitter account. Sharing the viral picture on January 25, 2023, Sam Pitroda wrote in the caption, the person standing with Rahul Gandhi in this picture is my friend and UK leader Jeremy Corbyn. This is not a BBC editor. Along with this, the link of his Wikipedia has also been shared, on which all his information has been given.

Vishvas News, after scanning the social media accounts of Jeremy Corbyn, found that he is the leader of the UK. The same information has been given about Jeremy Corbyn on the website giving information about the members of UK Parliament.

Taking the investigation forward, we started searching for the BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’. According to information on the BBC UK website, the documentary is produced by Richard Cookson and executive producer Mike Radford.

We contacted Congress spokesperson Abhimanyu Tyagi for more details. They told us the viral claim is false. The person seen in the picture is UK minister Jeremy Corbyn and Sam Pitroda. This photo is several months old. Such social media posts are being shared to tarnish the image of Rahul Gandhi, he said.

We scanned the profile of Bhushan Gosavi, the Facebook user who shared the post. We found that they are influenced by an ideology. According to the information given on the user’s profile, he is a resident of France. The user has more than 100 friends on Facebook.