Was UP CM Watching Hathras Girl’s Cremation Live? Image is Altered

The image was actually taken when the chief minister was interacting with the family via video call.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

A photograph of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is being circulated widely to claim that he watched the last rites of the 19-year-old Hathras girl, who was cremated in the dead of the night, on 30 September. However, this image has been photoshopped.

CLAIM

The text inside the photograph claims that Adityanath watched the girls’ cremation live on his laptop.

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Photo Courtesy: Screenshot/Facebook)

The aforementioned post had been shared over 2,000 times at the time of writing this story.

This comes amid the nationwide outrage and anger against the UP government and the police who have been accused of performing the girl’s last rites, without the presence of any of her family members.

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Photo Courtesy: Screenshot/Facebook)

Several users of Facebook shared the picture with the same claim.

An archived version of the post can be found here.(Photo Courtesy: Screenshot/Facebook)

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

On conducting a reverse image search on the image, we were led to several articles that carried the original picture, showing CM Adityanath speaking to the family’s kin after the incident.

A story published on NDTV on 30 September headlined ‘Yogi Adityanath Speaks To UP Gang-Rape Victim's Family Through Video Call’ carried the same image. The news organisation had attributed the image to news agency ANI.

The Quint was also able to access the image of the chief minister. On comparing the two images, one can notice that the image has been photoshopped.

(Photo: Facebook/Accessed by The Quint)

The same image was carried by India Today and Hindustan Times in their reports with the same context.

Next, we tried to identify the image, which has been used to photoshop the original one to add the pyre. We were able to trace this image back to India Today’s report on Tanushree Pandey’s Twitter timeline.

She tweeted the image on 30 September after the girl’s hurried cremation by the authorities.

Evidently, this image of Yogi Adityanath has been altered to claim that he was watching the girl’s cremation live.

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