No, this is not a real photo showing India Prime Minister Narendra Modi's mother with an image of a rival politician hanging on her wall

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on May 10, 2019 at 09:59
  • Updated on May 10, 2019 at 09:59
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP India

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Multiple Facebook posts have shared a photo that purports to show a framed photo of Indian politician Akhilesh Yadav hanging on a wall at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mother’s house. The claim is false; the image has been doctored from an original and a photo of Yadav has been superimposed over a Hindu wall hanging.

The doctored image was posted to Facebook here on April 24, 2019 and it has been shared hundreds of times. 

Below is a screenshot of the doctored image:

Screenshot of the misleading post

The misleading post’s Hindi language caption reads: “The one who lives in everyone's heart is called Akhilesh. Long live the Yadav clan.”

The man in the photo on the wall, which has been circled in green in the misleading image, is Akhilesh Yadav, a politician, and leader of the Samajwadi Party, which is running against Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in elections.

Here is a recent AFP report published about the elections.

AFP conducted a Google reverse image search and found the same image of Modi visiting his mother at her house tweeted here by the ANI news agency on April 22, 2019 -- two days before the misleading post was uploaded.

The exact same photo was also carried by Indian news websites in April 23, 2019 reports on Modi voting in Ahmedabad, for example here and here.

ANI also posted a video of Modi meeting his mother, Heeraben Modi, on April 23, 2019 at her residence in Gandhinagar.

In the original image, Modi can be seen greeting his mother and the image seen hanging on the wall appears to be a picture of a Hindu god Krishna and consort Radha.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the doctored photo in the misleading Facebook post (R) and the image tweeted by ANI (L):
 

AFP has circled the original picture hanging on the wall in red.

Similar images of the Hindu god Krishna and his consort, Radha, are widely available online, for example here.

Below is a screenshot of the picture: 

 

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