A video has recently gone viral on Twitter, claiming that Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar refused to be quarantined after a few Indian delegates at the recent G7 summit tested positive for COVID-19. A segment of the video also claims that Jaishankar broke isolation norms to meet United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Home Secretary Preeti Patel during the summit.
BOOM found that the claims made by the video are false - while Jaishankar did meet Blinken and Patel, the meetings took place before the Indian delegates tested positive for COVID-19. We also found that the segment of the video making the claims has been doctored into a news report by Sky News, to mislead viewers into thinking it is part of Sky News' coverage.
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The video was shared by Twitter user Shehnaz30 (@iraniShenaz1958) with the caption: "Indians behave carelessly at G7 as their PM behaves in India ... Indian team highly insulted and advised not to take part in next months meeting."
Click here to watch the video, and here to view an archive of the tweet.
At the time of writing this article, the video had been viewed more than 48,000 times on Twitter, and retweeted more than 1,375 times.
BOOM found that the video was first shared by Sikh Federation UK on Twitter.
Click here to view an archive of the tweet.
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Fact Check
The video shared by user @iraniShenaz1958 started off with a news segment by British news channel Sky News, which spoke of the recent G7 summit, that was attended by Jaishankar, along with some Indian delegates.
On the top right corner of the video, we found a logo of the Sikh Federation UK.
The logo of Sikh Federation UK
From the 1.03 mark onwards in the viral video, we noticed that the narrative voice and the presentation style changes completely from the previous parts of the news segment - the voice over is different, and it shows still photos instead of the regular video coverage.
It is during this segment that the narrator claims that Jaishankar refused to follow isolation, despite his delegates testing positive for COVID-19, and went ahead to meet Blinken and Patel.
During the segment, we could no longer see the Sky News logo, but the Sikh Federation UK's logo was still visible.
BOOM looked through Sky News' coverage of the G7 summit, and found the news segment shown in the first part of the video.
In Sky News' segment, we were unable to find the segment that made the viral claims about Jaishankar breaking quarantine. This, along with the abrupt change in the voice over and presentation style led us to believe that clip has been doctored into the news segment by Sky News to mislead viewers into believing that it was part of Sky News' coverage on the G7 summit.
Furthermore, news reports on the summit clarifies that while Jaishankar and three members of his delegation went into isolation on May 5, he had met Blinken and Patel on May 3. It also states that Jaishankar attended the summit virtually, due to being in quarantine. The claims stating Jaishankar broke quarantine to meet the duo are therefore false.
The image of Jaishankar sitting at a virtual conference without a mask, however, is true, and was tweeted by Jaishankar himself.
