A screenshot of a tweet claiming to show a gaffe by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi - where he supposedly referred to late actor Sushant Singh Rajput as a 'cricketer', is edited and fake.
Sushant Singh Rajput was found dead at the age of 34 in his apartment in Mumbai on June 14, 2020. The police ruled it as suicide. His death has sent shockwaves and has seen an outpouring of grief and condolence messages from people from various walks of life. Rajput is remembered for his portrayal of former Indian cricket team captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni in the biopic MS Dhoni - The Untold Story.
The viral fake screenshot reads, "I am sorry to hear about the passing of #SushantSinghRajput. A young & talented Cricketer gone too soon. My condolences to his family, friends & fans across the world." The timestamp of the tweet in the image shows 7.31 pm on June 14, 2020, with 6,676 retweets and 49.7k likes.
BOOM received the viral screenshot on its WhatsApp helpline number (7700906111) inquiring about it.
Twitter
We found the viral screenshot was circulating on Twitter with several users falling for it and accusing Gandhi of incorrectly addressing him as a cricketer.
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Also Read: The Irresponsible Reporting Of Sushant Singh Rajput's Death
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral screenshot purporting to be Gandhi's tweet is fake and that he did not address Sushant Singh Rajput as a 'Cricketer' instead of calling him an actor.
We checked Gandhi's Twitter timeline and found that he had correctly addressed Rajput as an 'actor' and not a 'cricketer' in his condolence tweet. The original tweet matches the date and time - 7.31 pm on June 14, 2020, as in the viral screenshot, and the text is also the same except for the word 'cricketer'.
In order to check if Gandhi had tweeted the viral screenshot, we also performed an advanced Twitter search using @RahulGandhi and we did not find any replies to any deleted tweet by Gandhi on the date mentioned in the screenshot. We also looked for archives of the tweet but did not find any.
The advanced search results from June 14, 2020, to June 15, 2020, also showed that there were no replies after 7.31 on June 14, 2020, pointing out a mistake to Gandhi.
If a tweet which supposedly had a mistake and was retweeted over 47,000 times, more users would have captured screenshots with different number of Likes and retweets of the incorrect tweet.
Additionally, we spotted that all the users pointing out the gaffe tweeted the same screenshot with the exact number of retweets and likes. BOOM has previously debunked fake tweet screenshots that have gone viral attributing fake tweets to political leaders. (here, here)