A set of photos with the caption, “Tunnel found under Sasikala’s house in TN. Loads of black money and gold unearthed,” have been doing the rounds on social media and WhatsApp groups for the past couple of days now.
The posts claim that a significant amount of cash and gold was recovered from the properties of jailed AIADMK leader VK Sasikala.
A quick fact check, however, reveals that the photos are fake and have been taken from bank robberies in Navi Mumbai and I-T raids in Delhi a couple of days back.
The photos with the Rs 200, 500 and 2,000 notes have been taken from an Income Tax department raid in New Delhi on 17 November, 2017. Publications including The Times of India and India Today carried stories on the same. The raids were conducted on the Delhi residence of National Stock Exchange (NSE) broker Sanjay Gupta, during the ongoing searches related to OPG Group in the co-location case.
Some other posts had photos of a tunnel, claiming that this was found under Sasikala’s house in Tamil Nadu.
However, these photos are actually from a Navi Mumbai robbery, where over 30 lockers of a bank were robbed by men who entered the room by digging a tunnel from a rented shop in the same building. Both The Indian Express and Hindustan Times had photos from the ground, something that was picked up by many on social media to spread the fake news about the ‘Sasikala raids.’
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