No, Sheila Dikshit Did Not Say 'Kejriwal Can Sell His Mother For Votes'

A photograph of a newspaper clipping that purports to show Delhi Congress Committee President Sheila Dikshit saying Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal can sell his mother for votes, is false.

The fake photo was posted by a Facebook user on Monday and has already been shared over 100 times.

BOOM looked for text of the fake news clipping and found a similar report on Aaj Tak's website.

It appears Aaj Tak's news article has been doctored and shared on social media with a fake narrative.

The post can be seen here and its archived version can be accessed here.

Fact Check

The viral post has picked up the article verbatim from Aaj Tak's story.

The original story was about Dikshit's remarks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's handling of terrorism.

Interestingly, except for the lead paragraph in the viral report, Arvind Kejriwal's name has not been mentioned anywhere else in the fake article.

BOOM checked the viral post and found a stark difference between the font used for the quote and the rest of the story.

We also compared the interview with the viral post.

Both the viral post and the Aaj Tak article make the same error of referring to Sheila Dikshit as Delhi's chief minister, in the lead.

What was changed?

The original report reads, "Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit said that Narendra Modi dealt with terrorism in a more strict way when compared to Manmohan Singh."

(Hindi: दिल्ली की मुख्यमंत्री शीला दीक्षित ने कहा कि मनमोहन सिंह की तुलना में प्रधानमंत्री नरेंद्र मोदी ने आतंकवाद के खिलाफ कड़ी कार्रवाई की |)

However, the sentence has been tweaked in the viral post. Here, Dikshit's statement has been edited to read 'Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit said that Kejriwal can even sell his mother for votes'.

(Hindi: दिल्ली की मुख्यमंत्री शीला दीक्षित ने कहा की केजरीवाल वोट के लिए अपनी माँ को भी बेच सकता है |)

A Growing Trend

There have been several recent examples of spreading disinformation in the garb of news articles. A news clipping generator tool called Fodey that has also been used in generating such clippings.

Read BOOM's other fact-checks on fake news articles, below.

• RBI Board Member S Gurumurthy Tweets Fake Newspaper Clipping
• Fake Newspaper Claims SRK’s Canadian Citizenship Application Rejected
• Fake Newspaper Clipping Claims PM Modi’s Siblings Blame Him For Father’s Death