A satire post claiming that a few Kukis from Manipur who met Rahul Gandhi recently were inspired by him to give up violence and follow Mahatma Gandhi's path is viral as a real incident online.
BOOM found that the tweet was made by a parody handle that merely carried the name and profile picture of the Press Trust of India (PTI), leading users to believe that the news is real. The parody account, until three days ago, carried the name 'देव'
Rahul Gandhi visited Manipur on June 29 and met displaced families and victims of violence that has grappled the state for almost two months now. More than 100 people have been reported dead and 400 injured in the violence between the Kuki and Meitei communities.
"Manipur needs healing. Peace has to be our only priority," Gandhi tweeted as reports about his vehicle being stopped near Imphal began circulating.
The caption on Twitter by a handle impersonating PTI reads, "After meeting with Rahul Gandhi, kuki militants surrendered. One of the militants says wants to give up violence and follow the path of Gandhi from now onwards." It is being shared with a photo of two militants in blindfolds surrounded by the arresting officers.
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
Several users on Facebook have fallen for this satire tweet and shared it as real.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the photo shows Kuki insurgents arrested for extorting money from businessmen, and the incident is not connected to Rahul Gandhi's visit to Manipur.
A reverse image search of the photo led us to a story by EastMojo published on July 26, 2022. The story carried the same photo from our viral claim and was titled 'Manipur: Kuki insurgents using another outfit’s name for extortion arrested'
According to this story, two militants from the Kuki National Army-India (KNA-I) were arrested for intimidating non-Manipuri businessmen and extorting money from them. The report also mentions that the men claimed they were from another outfit, the National Revolutionary Front, Manipur (NRFM) to intimidate the businessmen.
We then closely examined the imposter PTI account and found that its handle name was @AWhiteTigerINC. The actual handle of the PTI account is @PTI_News. The bio of the fake PTI account clearly mentions 'parody'.
The ID of this Twitter handle, which is a unique number for every Twitter account, was '1574058259761496064'
We looked for a cached version of the account on Google and found that until June 27, it carried the name 'देव'. The Twitter ID of this account matches the parody PTI account.
A screengrab of the cached version of the @AWhiteTigerINC account, along with its Twitter ID (highlighted in green) taken from the webpage's backend.
According to the cached version, the latest retweet by the account was a June 27 tweet by Prasad Vedpathak, which helped us conclude that until that day, the account's name was 'देव'.
Another archive of the page from March 24 helped us conclude that at least till then, the page was called 'देव गुज्जर'. The Twitter ID of all these versions of the page match the parody PTI account.
A screengrab of the archive of the parody PTI account and the tweet ID (highlighted in green) taken from the webpage's backend.
On June 30, the account changed its username as well. The handle @AWhiteTigerINC became @PTINewsOfficiat and the name continued to be PTI.
Click here to view the account and here for an archive of the page.
The Twitter ID of this new handle and name matches its previous ones.
BOOM could not independently verify the number of times or exact date the account changed its name, but it has been changed at least thrice between March and June 2023.