Claim
An old, fake newspaper clipping purportedly from The Boston Globe has revived online and is circulating with false claims. The clipping with the headline "Indian Politician Arrested" is being shared on social media taking a dig at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. The newspaper clipping allegedly published on September 30, 2001, reports crediting to news agency AFP that the son of an ex-Indian prime minister was arrested at Boston airport for carrying unaccounted cash and banned drugs. One such post with the fake clipping reads, "When Rahul Gandhi was arrested back in Boston for drugs. He was released after intervention by PM Vajpeyee. Soniya begged and large hearted Vajpeyee spoke to US authorities. Now such shabby character wants to be PM. One can check newspaper clipping of Boston(USA)".
Fact
BOOM performed a reverse image search on the newspaper clipping and found various online tools that creates newspaper clipping in the same format. We used the clipping generator tool offered by the website fodey.com and were able to create the exact image entering the same details mentioned in the viral clipping. We further noticed that the generated clipping contains the same text on its bottom right side when compared to the viral one. However, a The Hindu article from September 29, 2001, published a source-based report titled, 'Was Rahul Gandhi detained by the FBI?' An excerpt from the article reads, "With the U.S. security agencies leaving nothing to chance after the September 11 terrorist strikes, sleuths of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ``detained'' Mr. Rahul Gandhi, son of the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and the Leader of the Opposition, Ms. Sonia Gandhi, for about an hour at the Boston airport early this week, sources here said." BOOM had debunked the same fake newspaper clipping when it went viral in 2019.