An edited image showing wrestler Vinesh Phogat, Sangeeta Phogat, and others smiling inside a police van is viral on social media. Users are sharing this image to purport that the protest, and recent clashes with the police are an act for the camera.
BOOM found the original photo, and used the face editing app "Face App" to digitally add smiles to the faces in the image, which resulted in creation of the photo with smiling faces going viral.
Phogat and the others were detained by Delhi Police on Sunday following a scuffle between the police and protesting wrestlers, after they were stopped from marching to the new parliament building which was being inaugurated. The viral image is being shared in this backdrop.
Twitter user Ashok Pandit was among the users who shared the image of Phogat and others smiling in the police van with the following caption (translated from Hindi), while quote tweeting a post from Congress leader Raj Babbar, which showed the scuffle between the cops and the protesters:
"Respected Raj ji, after doing drama on the road, this is his real face!
It has become a part of a tool kit that works to break our country!
Country's pride is in decline!"
Click here to view an archive of the above tweet.
Other users on Twitter and Facebook started sharing the exact same photo and caption as well. View such posts here, here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM looked through the responses to Pandit's tweet, which has now been deleted, and found many users claiming that the image has been edited to add the smiles digitally. Some of these users also shared another version of the image, which was an exact match with the viral photo, albeit without the smiles on the faces of the detained protestors.
Fellow protesting wrestler Bajrang Punia took to Facebook to share both the images, while stating that the one containing smiles is a fake image, and threatening legal action against those sharing it.
We used the image of the detained wrestlers shared by Punia, which did not show them smiling, and ran it through different AI-based editing apps to digitally add smiles to the faces.
The editing app called "Face App" rendered a result which was an exact match with the viral image. The following screen recording shows how we used the app to add the smiles.
The following comparison establishes the similarities between the viral image, and the one rendered by Face App.
BOOM has reached out to Phogat and her associates and family members, and the story will be updated with their comments if and when we get a response.