A photo of slain gangster Vikas Dubey dancing with his aides at a wedding reception has been doctored and shared with a fake caption claiming that Dubey was seen in the company of Bharatiya Janta Party spokesperson Sambit Patra.
BOOM found that Patra's face has been doctored over that of Jai Bajpai, a close aide and alleged cashier of Dubey.
Vikas Dubey made it to the headlines on July 3 for his involvement in the murder of 8 policemen who had gone to nab him at his village Bikhru in Kanpur. He made headlines again after he was killed in an encounter on July 10 - a day after he was apprehended by police in Madya Pradesh's Ujjain.
Also read Vikas Dubey: A Timeline Of Events From Ambush To Gangster's Encounter
BOOM found the doctored image circulating on the internet for the past few days, initially posted with satirical captions. However, the posts turned from satire to misinformation, when the captions started insinuating that Patra was indeed found dancing with Dubey in the photo.
One of the viral captions read: "Vikas Dubey dancing with Sambit Patra. Got this photo with a lot of difficulties (Original Hindi caption: सम्बित पात्रा के साथ डांस करते विकास दुबे बड़ी मुश्किल से मिला है यह फोटो)".
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Searching for the caption on Twitter revealed that the image was being shared with similar captions on the micro-blogging site as well.
Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search of the photo, and came across the exact same photo of Dubey dancing being published by several news websites. However, Sambit Patra was nowhere to be seen in this photo.
Hindi news website Amar Ujala also ran the photo with the caption: "Vikas Dubey dancing at Amar's (Vikas Dubey's close aide Amar Dubey) wedding".
According to news reports, Amar Dubey's wedding was held on June 29, which was attended by Vikas Dubey. Amar Dubey was eventually killed in an encounter on July 8, just a day before Vikas Dubey was arrested by the police.
As you can see from the photo above, Sambit Patra is not in it. Below, we have put both the images together for you to compare the real image to the doctored one.