By Hazel Gandhi
A viral screenshot purporting to show Congress' National Spokesperson Supriya Shrinate insulting Sonia Gandhi in a 2012 tweet, is fake.
BOOM found that the screenshot is fabricated and Shrinate did not make the derogatory post against Sonia Gandhi.
The viral screenshot is dated April 24, 2012, and claims to show Shrinate sharing a photo of Sonia Gandhi with the caption that translates to, 'Why madam? have all the dance bars in Italy shut?'
The screenshot was shared on X with the caption, "Sonia Gandhi was a dancer in Italy, I am not saying this, Supriya Shrinet is saying this"
(Original text in Hindi: "सोनिया गांधी इटली में डांससर थी ये मैं नहीं कह रहा हूँ सुप्रिया श्रीनेत कह रही है")
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false, the screenshot is fake and Shrinate has not made any such post against Sonia Gandhi.
Using the Advanced Search feature on X, we first ran a keyword search%20until%3A2012-04-25%20since%3A2012-04-24&src=typed_query) to look for the original post from Shirnate's account and found no results\.
Since replies to a post on X are preserved even after the posts are deleted, we ran a search for any replies to Shrinate's post%20until%3A2012-04-25%20since%3A2012-04-24&src=typed_query) from April 24, 2012\-\- the purported date of her post against Sonia Gandhi, and found no results here as well\.
The earliest posts sharing this screenshot on X and Facebook are from March this year, indicating that the purported post was discovered in March. We ran another search on X to check whether there were any replies calling out Shrinate for deleting the old 2012 post between March to June 2024 and did not find any results. We used the keyword 'delete' for this search and set the date filter between March and June 2024.
Finally, we ran a search on archive.is to check all the archives taken of Shrinate's X posts and did not find the viral screenshot here.
Shrinate also refuted the viral claims and said in a statement, "No such tweet was ever shared from my account ever, not even in 2012 (as) shown in the fake picture," while adding that she would pursue legal action against those responsible for circulating the post.
"The BJP supporters and trolls should be well aware that I come from a Congress family, my father was a Congress MP from 2009 to 2014 and I have always been an ardent admirer of Sonia Gandhi ji," she said.
Her statement ended with, "Cheap stunts and false malicious charges against me only deepen my resolve to fight these fake news peddlers."
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