A post is being shared widely on social media with a claim that Ritu Raj Choudhary, a second-year student of IIT Manipur, has hacked Google for 52 seconds. It is being claimed that Google appreciated his capabilities by offering him a joining letter with a package of 3.66 crores; and when they got to know that he does not have a passport, they spoke to the Indian Government and arranged it in 2 hours. The post claims that Ritu Raj will be flying to America in a private jet today. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Ritu Raj Choudhary, a second-year student of IIT Manipur, has hacked Google for 52 seconds; appreciating his capabilities Google offered him a joining letter with a 3.66 crores package.
Fact: Ritu Raj Choudhary did not hack Google. He just reported a bug. Also, he clarified through his LinkedIn account that he did not get any job offer from Google. He termed the viral message as ‘fake news’. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched about Ritu Raj Choudhary on the internet, many news articles were found in the search results. In the ‘Times of India’ article, it can be read that Ritu Raj Choudhary is a second-year student of IIIT Manipur (not ‘IIT Manipur’) and recently, discovered a potential bug in Google (not hacked Google for 52 seconds as claimed in the post). His interview with ‘Zee’ can be watched here. He did not mention anywhere that he hacked Google, he just mentions that he reported a bug to Google. His name can be seen on Google’s Bug Hunters list.
As the posted message went viral, he termed it as ‘fake news’ by commenting on one such post on Linkedin. He also wrote on his LinkedIn account saying – “I haven’t got any package or job offer from Google or Hacked anything it was just a bug which I have reported that’s it and currently I’m just in 2nd year Btech students so… Those news are Fake…”. His posts on the issue can be seen here and here.
To sum it up, Ritu Raj Choudhary said did not hack Google but just reported a bug.
