Fact Check: Woman Interviewing Dawood Ibrahim Is Not Congress Spokesperson Supriya Shrinate But Journalist Sheela Bhatt

New Delhi Vishvas News – A picture is going viral on the internet in which underworld don and 1993 Mumbai blast mastermind Dawood Ibrahim can be seen sitting with a woman. Social media users have claimed that the woman accompanying Dawood Ibrahim is Congress national spokesperson Supriya Shrinate. Vishvas News in its investigation found that the claim linked with the viral photo is false. Though the viral picture features Dawood Ibrahim, the woman accompanying him is not Supriya Shrinate but a journalist known as Sheela Bhatt, who conducted an interview with Dawood Ibrahim in 1987 at the Pearl Building in Dubai.

What’s going viral?

Social media user ‘Kalyan Shivhare’ shared the viral picture with a caption stating that the woman seen with Dawood in the picture is Supriya Shrinate. “The name of the woman seen with Dawood in this picture from 1987 is Supriya Shrinate. This is the national spokesperson of Congress, you can often see him talking shamelessly in foul language in TV debates. Now I understand why this abusive woman fights with everyone and introduces herself with her foul language. The Congress always gives birth to a traitor and brings them up,” he wrote in the caption. Several other users are also sharing this image.

Investigation:

Contrary to the claims, the female seen with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim in the viral picture is not Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate. Sheela Bhatt, the journalist, clarified the context of the picture through a tweet from her official Twitter handle, debunking the false claims.

On June 14, Bhatt tweeted the picture, explaining that it was taken during her interview with Dawood Ibrahim at the Pearl Building in Dubai in 1987. In another tweet on June 17, she provided detailed information about the photograph. She revealed that the interview and the picture were published by the weekly magazines Abhiyaan and The Illustrated Weekly in 1987. The cover story, written by journalist Amrita Shah, featured Dawood Ibrahim, with all the accompanying photographs clicked by Shah herself.

Vishvas News reached out to Sheela Bhatt for clarification regarding the viral picture. Bhatt confirmed that the woman in the image was indeed her. She stated, “This interview of his was published in the campaign, which he had founded.” Bhatt further added that she interviewed Dawood Ibrahim again in 1993 for India Today.

We verified this claim by referring to the India Today archives, where we found the interview published under Bhatt’s byline. The interview was conducted over the phone and took place after the Mumbai bomb blasts. Our investigation unequivocally concludes that the woman seen with Dawood Ibrahim is journalist Sheela Bhatt, not Congress national spokesperson Supriya Shrinate.

It is important to note that last year, a charge sheet was filed against four individuals in relation to the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. According to the CBI charge sheet, these four individuals attended a meeting organized in Dubai under the leadership of Dawood Ibrahim, during which the conspiracy for the blasts was planned. The Mumbai bomb blasts resulted in the loss of 257 lives and over 700 injuries.

The user who shared the viral image with the false claim has over 600 followers on Facebook.