No, this is not a real photo of an Indian chief minister running away from a policeman

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on May 16, 2019 at 10:15
  • 3 min read
  • By Ross ADKIN

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An image that purports to show the chief minister of India's Uttar Pradesh state running away from a stick-wielding policeman has been shared tens of thousands of times on Facebook. The image has been doctored from an original photograph which shows a policeman threatening a cow with a stick.

The doctored image has been shared more than 175,000 times since it was published in this Facebook post on March 28, 2018.

The Hindi-language text above the photo in the image translates to English as: “Share if you have courage”.

Below is a screenshot of the doctored image:

Screenshot of the doctored image

The doctored image has also appeared here on Twitter.

The figure in orange is Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk, member of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, India's largest, with a population of some 200 million. 

Here is Adityanath's verified Twitter account, here is his website and here is the Uttar Pradesh state website.

Here is an AFP photo of Adityanath dated March 12, 2018:

Indian Chief Minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath looks on as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron take part in the opening ceremony of a solar power plant in Mirzapur on March 12, 2018 (AFP)

A Google reverse image search found a similar photo published here on a personal blog about Hindu religion and spirituality, dated September 19, 2013. 

The post containing the photo details the mistreatment of cows by residents of Delhi. The photo is uncaptioned and uncredited; multiple further keyword and reverse image searches did not find other examples of the picture used in mainstream media.

Below is a screenshot of the original image as it appears on the blog:

Screenshot of photo as it appears on blog

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the original (L) and doctored (R) images, with the differing elements circled in red.

The dog that appears to be chasing Adityanath has also been added into the doctored image:

Comparison of the original (L) and doctored (R) images

A Google keyword search for the terms “Yogi Adityanath running” found a photograph of the minister in this Indian Express report dated March 19, 2017.

The photo of Adityanath, credited to Indian news agency PTI, is a vertical mirror-image of how he appears in the doctored picture. In the PTI photo he is also holding a document in his hand which does not appear in the misleading post.

Below is a comparison between the picture of Adityanath in the misleading post (L) and in the PTI picture (R):

Comparison between the picture of Adityanath in the misleading post (L) and in the PTI picture (R)

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