An image of three Indian Police Service (IPS) officers photographed together is viral on social media with claims that they are siblings and have cracked the civil service examinations, making their family proud. BOOM found that the IPS officers in the photograph, identified as Shrut Kirti Somavanshi, Pooja Vashisth and Tushar Gupta respectively, are not related.
The image has been captioned in Facebook as, "Two Brothers And One Sister In The Same Family Are IPS OFFICERS. Proud Moment For Their Parents. Let's Congratulate them."
Posts in English are archived here and here.
The same image is doing the rounds with a similar narrative in Bangla, which translates to, "Not only jeans and cigarette.. this shows equal rights and equal respect. Three brothers and sisters from the same family are IPS officers. A daughter is not a burden. We need to understand women. If there is a right opportunity, not only boys, even girls of the family will shine bright and make us proud. Don't bring up the son and daughter differently. Bring them up as your children, not based on the gender. One day, you will be proud to say, 'She is my daughter'."
(Original text in Bangla: ''শুধু জিনস, সিগারেট নয়...সমান অধিকার, সমান মর্যাদা বলতে এটা বুঝতে হবে সমাজকে। এক পরিবারে তিন ভাই বোন IPS অফিসার!! মেয়ে মানে "কাঁধের বোঝা" নয়, আমাদের উচিত মেয়েদেরকে "বোঝা!" সঠিক সুযোগ পেলে শুধু ছেলে নয় মেয়েও বংশের মুখ উজ্জল করবে!! ছেলেকে আলাদা করে মানুষ, মেয়েকে আলাদা করে মানুষ না করে দুজনকে "সন্তান" হিসাবে মানুষ করুন, দেখবেন একদিন গর্ব করে বলবেন..."ও আমার মেয়ে!")
Click here to see the post and here, here and here for archived links.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on Yandex, a Russian search engine which led us to an Instagram account of Pooja Vashisth. Vashisth, an IPS probationer of the Haryana cadre, posted the image on August 22 in her Instagram profile. The post has been captioned as, "People who make life easier. #mypeople #ipslife #ceremonialwear #khaki".
Pooja Vashisth posted the image on her Instagram profile on August 22, 2020.
Shrut Kirti Somavanshi and Tushar Gupta were tagged as Shrutsom and Tusharg_ips respectively in the image. BOOM reached out to Somavanshi (@shrustsom), an IPS officer from the Madhya Pradesh Cadre, who rubbished the narrative associated with the viral image and said that the three of them are neither siblings nor are they related to each other. Tushar Gupta an IPS 2018 batch, from the Punjab cadre, further clarified, "The photograph was clicked in an IPS mess after a training session."
The same photograph has been posted by Tushar Gupta, a 2018 IPS batch of the Punjab Cadre.
Somavanshi and Gupta also shared Instagram stories after BOOM reached out to them to verify the fake narrative doing the rounds with the photograph. Somavanshi wrote, "False information, refrain from sharing."
Screenshot of Tushar Gupta's Instagram story on September 06, 2020.