Fake Image of Congress President Sonia Gandhi has been doing the rounds of social media which allegedly shows the bookshelf behind her having the ‘Holy Bible’, a statue of Jesus and another book titled ‘How to Convert India into Christian Nation’.
A Twitter user ‘No Conversion’, first shared the image with the caption ‘Who reads all these books?’. It was retweeted by over 1,000 people and garnered more than 2,900 likes. The tweet has since been deleted.
The viral photograph of Sonia Gandhi with the book on Christian conversion is fake and has been morphed.
A search for the viral image led to the original photo taken from a video shared by Rahul Gandhi in October 2020.The image is actually a screenshot of a video that was published by the Indian National Congress in October 2020, where Gandhi addressed the people of Bihar on matters related to the state’s economy and unemployment.
Sonia Gandhi is seen wearing the same attire as in the viral image. The bookshelf behind her shows that there is no Bible, a statue of Jesus or a book titled ‘How to convert India into a Christian nation’. The space where the the Holy Bible is seen in the viral photo is empty in the original and the conversion to Christianity book has been added by editing the title of another book. The statue of Jesus is nowhere to be seen in the bookshelf. All three of them have been edited into the photo to make the false claim.
National Coordinator, Digital Communications & Social Media of Congress Party Mr. Gaurav Pandhi wrote : Another one from BJP’s Farzi tool kit. The more they come up with fake content, to fool people, the more it gets evident that the BJP is losing and Congress is stronger. The RSS has no way to defend GDP failure and therefore more fake content.
FIR Filed for circulating Fake Image of Sonia Gandhi
As per the latest reports An FIR has been filed against BJP trolls Ms. Renuka Jain, Ms. No Conversion and Franco’s Gautier in Palghar district of Maharashtra for circulating morphed picture of Smt. Sonia Gandhi. FIR has been filed by Palghar district Youth Congress Prez Capt. Satyam Thakur.
Hindustan Times posted the news in 2020 with the same original photo of Sonia Gandhi also confirming no such book was present there.
This is not the first incident. Several attempts have been made in the past by posting fake or morphed photos of Sonia Gandhi with sexist captions, with an attempt to to portray that she doesn’t confirm to “Indian culture”.
Well-known images from the first James Bond film, ‘Dr No’ were passed off as those of former Congress president.
The images shared by right-wing Facebook page (Phir ek bar Modi sarkar) had more than 10,000 shares in less than 24 hours.
