A collage of two photos featuring the Prime Ministers of India and Italy, Narendra Modi and Giorgia Meloni, is doing the rounds on social media. This comes after PM Modi’s photos from his recent visit to the Lakshadweep islands went viral online. In the viral collage, Italian PM Meloni’s photo that looks like a screenshot of an ‘X’ post contains a caption that reads, ‘I have suddenly started loving beaches, IYKYK.’ The post’s description states that she posted this photo on X after PM Modi’s Lakshadweep photos were released on 4 January 2024. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Italian PM Giorgia Meloni posted a photo of herself in a beach after PM Modi’s Lakshadweep visit’s photos were posted on 4 January 2024.
Fact: The viral photo is old and reportedly from September 2022, which was shot during Giorgia Meloni’s visit to a beach in Italy. She has not posted this photo on her official ‘X’ handle on 4 January 2024. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni’s photo, which is in the viral collage, leading us to reports (here and here) from September 2022 that contained the same photo.
Reportedly, this photo was taken during her visit to a beach in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, with her partner and their daughter. To verify if she had posted this photo after 4 January 2024, the day on which PM Modi’s photos of his Lakshadweep visit were posted on X, we skimmed through the official ‘X’ handle of Giorgia Meloni.
However, we did not find this photo associated with the caption seen in the viral photo on her ‘X.’
This evidence clarifies that the viral claim is fake and the screenshot could be edited. Also, the viral post is shared on a Facebook page named ‘Bakri Premi Bapu’ which looks like a troll page based on the content that is shared on it (here, here, and here)
To sum up, an edited photo is being shared on social media to claim that Italian PM Georgia Meloni shared a photo of herself strolling on a beach after PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep.
