By Sk Badiruddin
A photo of India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval with a woman is being shared on social media with a false claim that the photo shows Doval's wife Aruni Doval.
BOOM found that the claim is false and the woman with Doval in the photo is Sujatha Singh, an Indian diplomat.
The image shows Doval walking with a woman in a pink saree through the premises of an airport with their luggage and is being with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "Photo of Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri get lakhs of likes. Let's see who will like the image of Nationalist couple Ajit Doval and Anu Doval."
(Original text in Hindi: शाहरुख खान और गौरी खान की जोड़ी को तो लाखों लाइक करते हैं । देखते हैं राष्ट्रवादी अजीत डोभाल और अनु डोभाल की जोड़ी को कौन-कौन लाइक करता है?)
View the Facebook posts here and here.
The image has also been shared on Twitter with the same claim.
View the archived tweet here.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the image on Yandex and found that the image was published in an Indian Express article on September 9, 2014 identifying the woman as foreign secretary Sujatha Singh.
On May 28, 2018, the verified Twitter handle of the Ministry of External Affairs tweeted image of Sujatha Singh with the then Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj. The tweet reads, "Women to the fore in Indian diplomacy! Minister @SushmaSwaraj greeted by Foreign Sec Sujatha Singh on day1 in office."
We found more photos of Singh on Getty Images which can be seenhere and here.
Sujatha was appointed in August 2013 as foreign secretary and was the third women to hold the job. She was replaced by S Jaisankar (now foreign Minister of India) in January 2015, as reported by Business Standard.
BOOM compared a photo of Singh with a photo of Aruni Doval, wife of Ajit Doval and found that they bear no similarities.
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