A doctored image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding a green flag with a white crescent moon and a star has gone viral on Facebook.
The image was shared by a Facebook page called 'Bhashan Ya Rashan', which has over 19000 followers.
The green flag with the white crescent moon and star depicts the original flag of the All-India Muslim League. It also very similar to the Pakistani national flag, with the addition of a white band to its left.
The photo has been shared with the following caption:
| Original Hindi text | English translation |
| आ गया अपनी असलियत पे भक्तो मार जाओ अब कही जाके | Finally showed (his) true colours Bhakts, go die somewhere now |
The post has been shared more than 1300 times and has garnered around 8500 reactions on Facebook.
Fact Check
Using a reverse image search, we found a similar photo used in a tweet by Doordarshan News on December 18, 2018. However, the white crescent moon and the star was nowhere to be found in this photo.
According to Doordarshan News, the image depicts Modi flagging off the first passenger train to pass through the Bogibeel Bridge, which is India's longest railroad bridge crossing over the Brahmaputra river in Assam.
BOOM placed the photo used in the Facebook post and placed it next to the photo from the tweet, which revealed the doctoring of the former very clearly.
BOOM searched for the Facebook page 'Bhashan Ya Rashan' in the newly launched Ad Library for India by Facebook and found that the post has been sponsored for Rs 500 - Rs 999 (approximate figure).
Screenshot of the ad performance of the post
However, Facebook eventually took down the ad as the advertiser did not provide his or her identity under the 'Paid for by' label.
This is in tune with the renewed advertisement policies by Facebook in their efforts to provide more transparency on political ads, which require advertisers to disclose their identity and location.