A post is being shared on social media claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had helped India win its first Olympic medal. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of Aaj Tak crediting Modi with the first Olympic medal.
Fact: This photo of Aaj Tak crediting Modi for the Olympic medal is morphed from an image published by Aaj Tak in its Facebook page. Aaj Tak is a Hindi news channel which runs a program named ‘Khabardar’ usually every night. There are no such programs, in the given list from Aaj Tak’s website, which claim that Modi had helped India win its first Olympic medal. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the photo, a Facebook post published by Aaj Tak was found. This post was published on 09 July 2019 with an identical image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and news anchor Sweta Singh, as in the social media post. The post is read in English as, ‘Watch Khabardar at 9 pm with Sweta Singh’ and it poses a question saying, ‘Will PM Modi win the world cup for India?’. This news program was done in 2019, when India was playing the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 in England.
When the photo is closely observed, the title has been changed from ‘Will PM Modi win the world cup for India?’ to ‘PM Modi helped India win its first Olympic medal’.
Three medals were pasted on the logo of the cricket world cup trophy seen in the original image; the trophy can still be seen in the edited image.
Aaj Tak is a Hindi news channel that runs a program named ‘Khabardar’ usually every night. The list of topics they addressed in these programs recently can be seen here. There are no programs in the list which claim that PM Modi had helped India win its first Olympic medal.
Mirabai Chanu won India’s first medal at the Tokyo Olympics on 24 July 2021. She won a silver medal in the Women’s 49kg weightlifting event. Articles regarding this can be seen here and here. Mirabai Chanu dedicated her Olympic medal to India and thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his encouragement.
To sum it up, the photo of Aaj Tak crediting Modi for the first Olympic medal is morphed.
