This photo of a student protester in India was doctored to include mistakes on her placard

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 29, 2019 at 06:50
3 min read
By AFP India

A photo of a student protester in India has been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts alongside a claim that she was holding a placard littered with grammatical errors. The claim is false; the image has been doctored to include grammatical errors on the placard; the protester pictured in the image shared the genuine photo on her Twitter page almost one week before the misleading posts emerged online.

The manipulated photo was published on Facebook here on November 19, 2019. It has since been shared more than 300 times.

The post's Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “See the (knowledge) of Hindi of this JNU scholar, they actually wanted to write, ‘first clear the entrance test and then vent out on JNU'”.

JNU is the widely used acronym for Jawaharlal Nehru University in India’s capital New Delhi, where students have been protesting against a proposed fee hike. Baton-wielding police responded to the unrest as students were set to march on parliament on November 19, 2019, AFP reported here.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The doctored photo was also shared here, here and here on Facebook; and here and here on Twitter alongside a similar claim.

The claim is false; the image was doctored to replace the original placard with one that contains grammatical errors.

Some Facebook users commented on the misleading post, claiming it was manipulated and posting the genuine photo. Below is a screenshot of the genuine photo:

Screenshot of original image

The Hindi-language slogan on the genuine placard translates to English as: “We will break the chains/obstacles of money, if that will try to keep us away from education."

A journalist in AFP's Delhi bureau identified the woman in the photo as JNU student Priyanka Bharti, who states on her Twitter profile that she was a candidate for president of the JNU Students’ Union.

Bharti has also posted several photos and videos of the recent protests on her Facebook and Twitter pages, including the authentic photo of her holding the original placard here on Facebook and here on Twitter. The image has been embedded below.

आगे से किसी बेटी जे साथ गलत हो तो बोलिए, किसी महिला की इज्जत तार तार हो तो बोलिए, और ये पोस्ट जो पढ़ रहे हमारा साथ दे।

समय देने के लिए शुक्रिया। और हां जो लकीर समाज में खींची हुई है, वो गलत है, और इसे दिखाने हेतु गलत लिखना जरूरी था।
बस लकीर पर ध्यान दें। pic.twitter.com/ljrUbl8PDr
— Priyanka Bharti (@priyanka2bharti) November 12, 2019

The original photo was also published in local media reports, for example here by Hindi-language news site Daily Bihar on November 19, 2019 and here by Hindi-language news site Bolta Hindustan on November 12, 2019.

Below are two screenshots of the authentic image published by Daily Bihar (L) and Bolta Hindustan (R):

Screenshots of the genuine image published by local media

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail