No, That’s Not Abu Salem With Kangana Ranaut, It’s Mark Manuel!

The photograph is of Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut with senior journalist Mark Manuel, not Abu Salem.

A photograph of Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut with senior journalist Mark Manuel is being widely shared on social media with a claim that the actress was photographed with 1993 Mumbai blast convict Abu Salem.

(Photo: The Quint)

A photograph of Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut with senior journalist Mark Manuel is being widely shared on social media with a claim that the actress was photographed with 1993 Mumbai blast convict Abu Salem.

The claim has been shared by multiple users on both Twitter and Facebook.

CLAIM

While some users identified the man in the picture as Salem, a few identified him as his brother.

One such claim read, “In a bar, with the brother of convicted terrorist and gangster Abu Salem.”

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The picture was also shared on Facebook by several users with the same claim.

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We conducted a reverse image search using Google search engine and came across a story on Huffington Post published in 2017.

The article titled ‘Kangana Ranaut Should Realise She’s Too Talented To Milk Her Personal Life For Attention’ was written by Mark Manuel and it had the same photograph as the viral posts.

(Source: Huffpost/Screenshot)

The caption beneath the photo read ‘Mark Manuel’ – who is a Mumbai based senior journalist’.

We then compared the pictures of Manuel and Salem to further prove that the man in the photograph is indeed Manuel.

(Source: Reuters/Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

Evidently, a picture of Mark Manuel with actor Kangana Ranaut is being shared to claim that she was photographed with Abu Salem.

(With inputs from SM HoaxSlayer)

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