That 1987 Report Saying Kejriwal Was Accused of Rape? It’s Fake

The clipping of the newspaper claimed a 19-year-old Arvind Kejriwal had raped a woman at IIT Kharagpur.

Clippings of a report claiming Arvind Kejriwal was accused of raping a woman in 1987 at IIT Kharagpur has gone viral.

Photo Courtesy: Altered by The Quint

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CLAIM: Social media is buzzing with a story about Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal being accused of raping a woman in the hostel of the India Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, where he went to pursue engineering in 1987. The circulated clipping of the English daily The Telegraph carried a story with the headline: 'IIT student accused of rape'.

This is not the first time the story and the clipping has done the rounds on social media. Here is what people have been sharing on Twitter:

TRUE OR FALSE?

The news about the Delhi chief minister being accused of rape is false. How do we know?

While trying to verify the credibility of this clipping, we stumbled upon a tool to generate newspaper clippings in which one can alter the text, header, name of the paper, date and day. This tool is free and lets you generate a plausible image of a newspaper article.

But there’s a giveaway – the first two columns of the news report changes to whatever the user inputs, but the third mostly hidden column that is only partially visible and the text on that column, never changes.

The viral image being circulated online.

The image generated by The Quint. Note the words in the third column.

The next giveaway was the fishy location band. While the clipping of the Kejriwal rape story shows the place line to be just 'Kharagpur’ with no date, an original archive image of the daily shows that the paper’s location band is written with the date, 'New Delhi, June 1:'.

Another difference in the style sheet of both articles was the breaking of the paragraph as circled in the image. The original archive image shows no spacing between the two paragraphs, while very clear spacing can be seen in the clipping of the rape story naming AAP chief.

A newspaper clipping of a story published in The Telegraph on 1 June 1987 edition. 

Similar clippings of the fake rape story involving Arvind Kejriwal have been shared by many on social media before, in 2016.

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