Fact-Check: Image of Suresh Chavhanke & His Wife Viral With False Communal Claim

Chavhanke said on Twitter the viral post is fake and threatened to take legal action against those spreading it.

Fact-Check | The viral image has been edited to add Suresh Chavhanke and his wife's picture.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

An image of a news bulletin purportedly from Hindi news channel Aaj Tak is being shared to claim that right-wing propaganda channel Sudarshan News' Editor-in-Chief Suresh Chavhanke's wife Maya Suresh Chavhanke has eloped with a Muslim man.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(More archives to similar claims can be found here, here, and here.) We also received a query about the post on our WhatsApp tipline.

What is the truth?: The image is fabricated. The picture and texts have been added to a template available on the internet. Chavhanke, on his Twitter, said that the viral post is fake and threatened to take legal action against people who are spreading the post.

How did we find out?: At first we noticed a discrepancy in the supposed news bulletin.

• The spelling of Chavhanke is different and incorrect in one of the bands.

Chavhanke is misspelt in the one of the bands.

(Source: Viral post/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

• A reverse image search on the picture of Chavhanke with his wife led us to the same picture uploaded on his Twitter handle on 27 September 2020.

• On performing another reverse image search on the entire template we came across a similar one as seen in the viral post. It was named 'free breaking news layout'.

• The template was uploaded on a website called 'MTC Tutorials'

• A comparison clearly shows that the template has been edited to add the picture and texts to create the viral claim.

A comparison highlights the similarities between both the images.

(Source: MTC Tutorials/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

Aaj Tak's breaking news format: We went through the channel's social media handles and found a video where the breaking news format is completely different than what is seen in the viral post.

We found that the format of Aaj Tak is completely different.

(Source: Aaj Tak Twitter/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

What did Chavhanke say?: On his Twitter handle, Chavhanke uploaded the viral post's screenshot and said that the post is "fake". He said that his family is a staunch Hindu like him. He further mentioned that he would taking legal action against those spreading the misinformation.

Conclusion: A fake screenshot of a news bulletin which claims that Sudarshan News Editor-in-Chief Suresh Chavhanke wife eloped with a Muslim man is going viral on social media platforms.

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