No, this is not a real photo of a 'tsunami' of supporters for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on April 11, 2019 at 08:30
  • 3 min read
  • By AFP India
Multiple Facebook posts have shared a photo that they claim shows a “tsunami” of people attending an event to support Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The claim is false; the photo has been doctored from an original image showing the 2017 swearing-in ceremony of a Bharatiya Janata Party politician in Himachal Pradesh, which Modi attended.

The photo was published in this Facebook post uploaded on April 8, 2019, which has been shared scores of times.

The caption says: “In support of Champions of Earth Narendra Modi jee...tsunami start...with huge waves...Namo again..Plz share to all the people of India.” 

“Champions of Earth” is a reference to an award which Modi received from the United Nations in 2018 for his contributions to the environment. Here is an article published on the UN’s website in 2018 about Modi’s award.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

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Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post

The same image was shared with a similar claim on Facebook here

Through a reverse image search on Yandex, AFP found that the photo in the misleading posts had been doctored from this image shared on Twitter on April 9, 2018.

Below is a screenshot of the original image:

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Screenshot of the original image

The image was shared on a Twitter fan account for Amit Shah, the national president of the BJP. Here is his official website.

The post's Hindi-language caption says: "It will be taught in history that every political party ganged up to fight against the BJP, so powerful was @narendramodi and @AmitShah". 

Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo shared on the Amit Shah account (l) and the doctored image in the misleading posts (r):

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Screenshot comparison of the photo shared on the Amit Shah account (l) and the doctored image in the misleading posts (r)

In the doctored image, parts of the crowd have been cloned -- a photo editing technique -- to fill the frame. The original image shows the Indian flag and buildings on the skyline.

Here is an explanation of clone in PhotoShop on the Adobe website.

AFP found similar photos shared on this official BJP Twitter account on December 27, 2017.

The caption states: “PM Shri Narendra Modi at the swearing-in ceremony of the Council of Ministers of the Himachal Pradesh Government in Shimla.”

The location in the images shared in both tweets corresponds with Google user images tagged to Google Street View images of Ridge Maidan in the state of Himachal Pradesh.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the original image (l) in the Amit Shah fan account tweet and a Google user image tagged to Ridge Maidan on Google Maps (r):

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Screenshot comparison of the original image (l) and the Google user image tagged to Ridge Maidan on Google Maps (r)

The BJP’s official YouTube channel also shared a live video of the swearing-in ceremony from Himachal Pradesh on December 27, 2017. 

At 6 minute 08 seconds, a similar visual appears in the video. AFP has matched the locations of the YouTube visual screenshot alongside BJP Twitter photo screenshot.

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Screenshot comparison of the YouTube video (l) and BJP Twitter photo (r)

According to multiple media reports, for example here by NDTV, on December 27, 2017, a BJP politician took the oath to be Himachal Pradesh chief minister with Modi and BJP president Amit Shah in attendance.

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