A morphed graphic of Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar featuring a fake quote of United Kingdom's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak praising former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ability to revive India's economy, is circulating on social media.
The graphic with the quote features a logo of Dainik Bhaskar, and images of Sunak and Singh, appearing to show that it was published by the news organisation on one of their social media platforms.
BOOM found that the quote attributed to Sunak is fake. We also reached out to Dainik Bhaskar, which confirmed the same.
Rishi Sunak was recently elected as UK's third prime minister this year amid an economic crisis in the country. Sunak, who previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) in Boris Johnson's government, vowed to revive Britain's economy. The viral graphic is being circulated in this backdrop.
The Hindi caption in the graphic translates to, "Need a Prime Minister like Manmohan Singh to give right direction, condition to India and repair a weak economy- Rishi Sunak".
(Original Text in Hindi: भारत को सही दिशा और दशा देने. कमजोर गिरती अर्थव्यवस्था को सुधारने के लिए मनमोहन सिंह जैसे प्रधानमंत्री की आवश्यकता है -ऋषि सुनक)
Click here to view the post.
Click here to view the post.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a related keyword search in Hindi but we did not find any such news reports from Dainik Bhaskar published on its website.
We were also unable to find any credible news reports stating Sunak had spoken about Manmohan Singh.
Additionally, a keyword search on Twitter led us to the original graphic published from Dainik Bhaskar's official Twitter handle featuring the same collage of images of Rishi Sunak and Manmohan Singh.
Click here to view the tweet.
A comparison between the viral post and the original Dainik Bhaskar graphic published on Twitter can be seen below.
In the original graphic, the font style is different, and it does not carry a quote by Sunak. The original Dainik Bhaskar graphic reports about Congress leaders P Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor's comments on choosing minorities as prime ministers in India and the BJP's response to it.
BOOM reached out to Prasoon Mishra, national editor of Dainik Bhaskar Digital, for further confirmation about the graphic. Mishra, in an email response to BOOM confirmed, "The graphic content does not belong to Bhaskar. At least the digital wing has not used it."
The news outlet also put out a statement later clarifying the viral graphic to be fake.
According to reports, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a telephonic conversation with Rishi Sunak on October 27, 2022 and discussed on further strengthening the trade pact between the two countries.
Rishi Sunak, scripted history by becoming Britain's first prime minister of Indian descent. Since assuming the top job on October 24, 2022, a flurry of out of context images and old videos have been shared in India and abroad. BOOM has since done a number of fact-checks related to Sunak.