A couple of morphed images of Prime Minister Narendra Modi photographed during his ongoing five-day Italy and UK trip is being shared on social media with captions falsely claiming that the Italian government did not provide a car to pick him up from the airport.
BOOM found that the viral images are edited and boards reading 'taxi' have been separately added in the image.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached Rome on Friday morning to attend the G20 summit. According to a report published in India Today, he will be visiting Rome and the Vatican City from October 29-31, and later travel to the UK.
The pictures are viral in this backdrop.
Sharing a picture, a Facebook page has used a Hindi caption which translates to 'In Italy, he has to move around in a taxi... when being in opposition, we don't like it then you can imagine how the followers would take this epic insult meted out to their God in a foreign country'.
(Hindi: इटली में टैक्सी से चलना पड़ रहा है... जब विपक्षी होकर हमें यह अच्छा नहीं लग रहा है तो सोच सकते हैं कि- बेचारे भक्त अपने भगवान की विदेश में हो रही इस घनघोर बेइज्जती को कैसे बर्दाश्त कर रहे होंगे)
View the viral post here.
Another photo shows Modi standing in front of a black Volkswagen car. A blue board below the number plate of the vehicle has 'la Prima App in Italia per i taxi' written over it. The board also has a logo of itTaxi - a cab service app - over it.
A Hindi caption with the Facebook post translates to 'Who goes to receive the prime minister in a taxi... it means the fame has reached Italy too'.
(Hindi: अरे भाई टैक्सी में कौन लेने जाता है परधान मंत्री जी हैं मतलब डंका बज रहा है विदेश में भी)
View the viral post here.
The photos have been shared with similar false caption on Twitter too.
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Fact Check
BOOM did a reverse image search and found the original set of viral images without the taxi boards being used in several news reports.
Wire agency Asian News International (ANI) tweeted both the images on October 30, 2021 stating that the pictures were from the prime minister's visit to the Vatican city where he went to meet Pope Francis.
BOOM compared the viral images with the original pictures tweeted by ANI and found that the boards with taxi signs were morphed over the original photos.
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