In light of recent BBC documentary on the 2002 Gujarat riots and the subsequent blocking of this documentary by the Indian government by using emergency powers under the IT rules, 2021, a social media post accompanying an image of Rahul Gandhi claiming that he had met with BBC producer six months ago is being widely shared. The post alludes that Rahul Gandhi met with the producer of the controversial BBC documentary. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the viral post.
Claim: Image of Rahul Gandhi with producer of BBC documentary ‘India: The Modi Question’
Fact: The person with Rahul Gandhi in the picture is Britain’s Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and not the producer of BBC documentary on Gujarat riots. The image was taken in May 2022 when Rahul Gandhi called on Corbyn in London. Whereas, according to BBC, Richard Cookson is the series Producer and Mike Radford is the Executive Producer of the controversial documentary series. Further, there are no reports linking Jeremy Corbyn to the documentary. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The man seen with Rahul Gandhi in the viral picture is not the producer of the controversial documentary, but Britain’s Labour party member and former opposition party leader Jeremy Corbyn. A reverse image search of the viral photo yielded multiple news reports that published the same image (here, here & here). These reports date back to May 2022, when Rahul Gandhi along with Sam Pitroda met him in London. Back then, the meeting caused quite a stir, as ‘the ruling BJP party has accused Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of endorsing UK Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn’s views against India.’
Earlier in 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Jeremy Corbyn on his visit to the UK. News reports related to this meeting can be viewed here and here.
As far as the production of the controversial documentary ‘The Modi Question’ is concerned, according to BBC, Richard Cookson is the series Producer and Mike Radford is the Executive Producer. And, we could not find any reports linking Jeremy Corbyn or the Labour party to the documentary.
Further, BBC is a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport which is regulated by its executive board and UK’s government-approved regulatory authority Ofcom.
To sum it up, it’s not BBC producer but Jeremy Corbyn whom Rahul Gandhi can be seen posing with.
