Indian Congress party senior leader Sonia Gandhi (R), along with her son, Indian National Congress party president Rahul Gandhi (L), leaves after filing her nomination papers for the forthcoming general election at a district court in Rae Bareilly on April 11, 2019. India's gargantuan election, the biggest in history, kicked off on April 11 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a second term from the South Asian behemoth's 900 million voters. ( AFP / SANJAY KANOJIA)

Photo shows Indian politician Sonia Gandhi with her son, not Italian businessman linked to corruption scandal

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on June 30, 2021 at 10:53
  • Updated on June 30, 2021 at 11:13
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP India

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A photo has been shared hundreds of times in Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts that claim that it shows the leader of India’s main opposition party Sonia Gandhi with Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was linked to one of India's biggest corruption scandals in the 1980s. However, the claim is false: the original photograph, taken in 1996, actually shows Gandhi with her son Rahul.

The photo was posted here on Facebook on June 6, 2021. The post has been shared more than 400 times.

“This is not Rahul Gandhi, this is Ottavio Quattrochi, a close friend of Sonia Gandhi, and there is nothing left to say by looking at the closeness in the photo," reads Hindi-language text superimposed on the photo.

A screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on June 30, 2021.

Italian-born Sonia Gandhi is the wife of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and president of the opposition Indian National Congress party.

Her husband was voted out of office in 1989 largely over a corruption scandal involving Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman to whom he was linked. Quattrocchi was suspected of being a middleman in a deal for a Swedish arms group accused of paying bribes of $1.3 billion to secure the sale of arms to India.

The company and all those accused have always maintained their innocence, and charges against Quattrocchi were dropped in 2009.

Sonia Gandhi’s party has also been embroiled in a host of corruption scandals.

The same photo was also shared on Facebook here and here; on Twitter here and here on Instagram.

The claim, however, is false.

A reverse image search on Google found the original photograph published here by Indian newspaper The New Indian Express on June 19, 2017. 

The article shared various images of Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi’s son and former president of the Indian National Congress, celebrating his birthday.

The Express published several images of Rahul Gandhi throughout his life, including the similar image taken by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency in 1996.

The original PTI photo caption reads as: “April 8, 1996: Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul at the raising function of Special Protection Group (SPG) on Monday.” 

SPG is India’s Special Protection Group that provides security to the Indian prime minister. It came into existence on April 8, 1985. 

Below is a screenshot comparison of the misleading post image (L) and PTI photo (R).

When the photo was taken, Rahul Gandhi was aged 25, whereas Ottavio Quattrocchi was in his late fifties.

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