An image an article clipping of the English news organisation The Indian Express featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s estranged wife Jashodaben, is being shared on social media.
The purported article quotes the woman by saying, “Modi destroyed all evidences of our marriage.”
Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false as this quote is fake and misattributed to the woman. The Indian Express clarified that no suchreport was published by the daily.
What we found: At first, we ran a relevant keyword search about this quote; however, did not find anything to prove the validity of the claim.
We, then, checked whether The Indian Express had published such an article.
We examined the paper's archive dated 30 November 2015, and did not find any headline or article that matched the claim.
The original front page from that day featured other news stories and did not include any article regarding PM Modi and Jashodaben’s marriage or any interview with her.
The viral screenshot also shows an obvious mistake in the website address displayed on the masthead, which reads “WWW.INDIANEXPRES.COM”, lacking the “s” at the end.
Moreover, several other headlines on the front page, such as “What CBI questioned Peter in Lie Test” and “The Paris model,” matched to articles published by The Indian Express on 30 November 2015. This suggests that the real newspaper's front page was digitally altered, to include the fake article.
Team WebQoof ran a Google reverse image search on the image and were led to a post on X by the English Daily which stated, “The screenshot below is fabricated, and no such article has been published by The Indian Express." (sic.)
Conclusion: A fabricated quote has been falsely attributed to Jashodaben, claiming that The Indian Express reported her as saying that PM Modi destroyed evidence of their marriage.
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