Journalist pictured interviewing notorious Indian crime lord is not Congress party spokesperson

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on June 26, 2023 at 09:48
  • 3 min read
  • By AFP India

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A woman pictured sitting across a table from India's most wanted criminal Dawood Ibrahim has been falsely identified in social media posts as Supriya Shrinate, spokesperson for the opposition Congress party. The woman in the photo is in fact the journalist Sheela Bhatt, who told AFP it shows her during a 1988 interview with Dawood -- who was designated a global terrorist by the United States in 2003. Shrinate, who worked as a business journalist before turning to politics, separately told AFP she had never met Dawood.

"Can anyone name this illiterate female journalist sitting with terrorist Dawood Ibrahim?" reads part of the Hindi-language caption of a photo shared on Facebook here on June 18, 2023.

The caption goes on: "The picture is from 1987. Back then she was a journalist and today the country knows her as a foul-mouthed woman... the spokesperson of the traitor, thief party, Supriya Shrinate."

Supriya Shrinate -- a former Delhi-based journalist -- was appointed as a spokesperson for the Indian National Congress party in September 2019 (archived link). She is also chairperson of social media and digital platforms for the opposition party (archived link).

Opposition parties and politicians are frequent targets of misinformation in India. AFP has previously debunked claims that labelled the Congress party "thieves" and "traitors" here and here.

Indian crime lord Dawood Ibrahim is suspected of masterminding the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai that killed more than 250 people (archived links here and here). He has been on the run ever since, and was designated a "global terrorist" by the United States in October 2003 (archived link).

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on June 21, 2023

The image was shared with similar captions on Facebook here and here and on Twitter here.

The photo in fact shows journalist Sheela Bhatt, not Shrinate, alongside Dawood.

Dawood interview in Dubai

A reverse image search on Google led to a tweet by Bhatt on June 14 (archived link).

"Interviewing Dawood Ibrahim in Pearl Building, Dubai. 1987," reads part of the tweet.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo as it appears in the false post (left) and the photo uploaded to Twitter by Bhatt (right):

Screenshot comparison of the photo as it appears in the false post (left) and the photo uploaded on Twitter by Bhatt (right)

In a reply to her own tweet, Bhatt also shared pictures of two magazine covers -- Abhiyaan and The Illustrated Weekly of India -- that carried her interview with Dawood.

Her reply reads: "Flooded with queries if this is fake pic or real. Just to put record straight posting two cover pages 1) Abhiyaan, the weekly founded by me and my late husband Kanti Bhatt and 2) The Illustrated Weekly. Both carried my interview of Dawood Ibrahim in 1987.

"Weekly’s cover story was written by distinguished journalist Amrtia Shah. My interview ran along with her cover story. All Dawood pics were taken by me."

She later corrected her tweet, saying the interview was in fact conducted in 1988 (archived link).

Bhatt also told AFP that the interview occurred in 1988, and was printed in Abhiyaan and The Illustrated Weekly.

"It's mischievous to drag [in] Supriya Shrinate. Pic is of 1988. She was around 10 years old then,” Bhatt said on June 22.

Shrinate separately told AFP on June 22: “I have never interviewed or met him (Dawood Ibrahim). I was a business journalist."

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