An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operating as Flight AI171 from Ahmedabad to London’s Gatwick Airport crashed shortly after takeoff yesterday. By Thursday evening, the death toll was at 294, including people on the ground.
An image has been widely shared since yesterday, claimed to be the last picture of former Gujarat CM, Vijay Rupani. During the investigation, we found that the image is old.
Claim:
X user Saral Patel shared the image with a false claim.
Other users are also sharing the image with the same claim.
Investigation:
We ran a reverse image search on the image being shared widely.
We found that Majid Ladhani had shared a picture in response to the post by Times Algebra. Sharing the screenshot from the Facebook profile of Goswami Lina, he wrote that this was an old picture.
Talking to Aaj Tak, Lina Goswami stated that the image was old and she had taken the picture on 12 October 2021, when she was on her way to London from Ahmedabad. She stated that she had also sent the picture to her son on WhatsApp and shared a screenshot with AajTak of the same.
Majid Ladhani, talking to Lighthouse Journalism, said that Goswani has now deleted the photo since it went viral.
Conclusion: An old image of former CM of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani now being shared as recent with a false claim that the picture depicts his final moments before the Air India plane crash. The viral claim is false.
