These viral photos of Rahul Gandhi with Jyoti Malhotra, who was arrested for allegedly spying for Pakistan, are edited
Jyoti Malhotra, a travel vlogger and YouTuber from Haryana, was arrested by Hisar police on 17 May 2025 on charges of espionage for Pakistan. Reports allege that she shared sensitive information related to India with Pakistan’s intelligence agency using encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat (here, here, and here).
In this context, a couple of photos of Jyoti Malhotra are going viral on social media (here, here, and here). In these photos, she is allegedly seen with Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The post is being shared with the claim that Jyoti Malhotra is associated with the Congress party. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Photos of Jyoti Malhotra with Rahul Gandhi, they suggest her association with the Congress party.
Fact: Both viral photos are digitally altered. The first photo originally shows Aditi Singh, a politician from Rae Bareli, with Rahul Gandhi. The second photo is from Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra on 18 September 2022, showing him hugging a woman supporter in Alappuzha, Kerala. In both photos, the woman’s face was swapped with that of Jyoti Malhotra, who was arrested for allegedly spying for Pakistan, to falsely show her alongside Rahul Gandhi. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the first photo showing a woman in a saree with Rahul Gandhi, we performed a Google Lens search. This led us to several media reports (here, here, and here) featuring a similar photo. These reports identified the woman as Aditi Singh, a politician from Rae Bareli.
On comparing the viral photo with the original photo of Rahul Gandhi and Aditi Singh from the media reports, it became evident that the viral photo had been edited. Aditi Singh’s face was digitally replaced with that of Jyoti Malhotra to falsely depict that she was seen alongside Rahul Gandhi.
To help readers understand how face-swapping works, we used an AI-based face swap tool, which allows users to superimpose one person’s face onto another in a photograph. Using it, we replaced Aditi Singh’s face in the original photograph with Jyoti Malhotra’s to demonstrate how the viral, edited photo was likely created. The result can be seen below.
To verify the second photo showing a woman wearing spectacles with Rahul Gandhi, we conducted a Google Lens search. This led us to a Facebook post by Rahul Gandhi dated 18 September 2022, in which he shared a photo from the Bharat Jodo Yatra, a campaign that took place from 7 September 2022 to 30 January 2023. We also found a media report that captioned the photo as “Rahul Gandhi hugging a woman supporter during the Bharat Jodo Yatra in Alappuzha, Kerala, on 18 September 2022.”
On comparing the viral photo with the original, it became clear that the viral photo had been edited to falsely show Jyoti Malhotra alongside Rahul Gandhi.
To help readers understand how face-swapping works, we used an AI-based face swap tool, which allows users to superimpose one person’s face onto another in a photograph. Using it, we replaced the face in the original photo with that of Jyoti Malhotra to demonstrate how the edited viral photo was likely created. The result is shown below.
To sum up, these viral photos of Rahul Gandhi with Jyoti Malhotra, who was arrested for allegedly spying for Pakistan, are edited.