A screenshot of a tweet claiming Sitaram Yechury, General Secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist), has referred to Chinese president, as his boss, is fake.
BOOM found that the screenshot had several discrepancies to be from an actual Tweet and also the date mentioned in the tweet - - October 20, 2015 - - was before Yechury joined Twitter.
The June 15 clash between the Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan valley of the eastern Ladakh region of the Line of Actual Control led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers and has escalated of tensions between India and China.
The tweet by Sitaram Yechury, dated October 20, 2015, reads "Communist Party of China values ties with CPI (M). Afterall, it's a pleasure for me to meet my boss. Looking forward to achieving the targets given by him in India. #Beijing Trip Red Salute!"
The screenshot is accompanied by a photo of Yechury, shaking hands with Jinping. Yechury and Jinping are both leaders of Communist ideology parties. The fake screenshot is being shared as protests against China are being held in various parts of the country, with many campaigning for the removal of China manufactured products.
The screenshot of the tweet has been shared by many users on social media with captions that suggest that Sitaram Yechury should be arrested for treason for supporting China. An archive of the post is available here.
Another user expressed surprise that Yechury called Xi Jinping his boss. An archive of the post can be found here.
Many Facebook pages shared the post with a claim that CPI (M) supports China, even in the current scenario of border disputes. An archive of the post is available here.
Fact Check
The tweet is dated October 20, 2015 and an advanced search on Twitter to find tweets by Sitaram Yechuri on the said date yielded no results.
A search on Twitter analytics tool Twitonomy revealed that Yechury had created the account on October 29, 2015, which is nine days after the tweet in the screenshot. This shows the tweet is fake.
Further, comparing the screenshot of the 2015 tweet with a recent tweet by Sitaram Yechury, shows discrepancies. It shows that the profile picture doesn't align with the tweet text as per the format of Twitter. The actual tweet by Sitaram Yechury has the profile picture and body are in a straight line, which when compared to the fake tweet show that the text is aligned slightly towards the right and doesn't follow the Twitter format.
BOOM did a reverse image search to find the origin of the photograph which led to an article in the Hindu with the headline 'Positive signals emerge from Yechury's meeting with China's top leaders.' published on October 20, 2015. Though the two leaders met in China on October 20, 2015, Sitaram Yechury did not tweet about it.
We also did not find any news reports claiming Yechury had referred to Jinping as his "boss".