An article, allegedly, on the website of the municipal corporation of Faridabad in Haryana, has gone viral to claim that the government of India has announced free travel for senior citizens across trains, buses, metro services, and even domestic flights.
According to the text, elder citizens will have the opportunity to access travel advantages with government-provided identification cards, including Aadhaar or Voter ID. This initiative seeks to stimulate travel within this demographic and foster domestic tourism nationwide.
It also claimed that besides centrally-managed railway services, the complimentary travel option will be available for state-operated bus services throughout the country and, in the initial phase, to Air India flights.
What we found: At first, we ran a relevant keyword search about this purported scheme, however, we did not find any official announcements or statements regarding it.
We, then, ran a keyword search for the website of the municipal corporation of Faridabad, however, we found the legitimate website of the space.
The website's URL was "Ulbharyana.gov.in," like most government portals in India. This was missing in the viral article as its URL was, "mcfaridabad.com"
Team WebQoof, then, looked into the website which carried the viral article.
We went onto 'whois.com' to find more details about the website and found that it was registered in March 2024 in Tempe, Arizona in the United States of America.
The website was registered via Go Daddy, an American internet domain registrar and web hosting company.
It is clear that this website was falsely impersonating as the portal for Faridabad's municipal corporation.
More on the website: When we scrolled down the viral article, its author's image and description by the name Catherine Johnson was available.
We ran a Google and Yandex reverse image search on the image and came across an article by the Daily Mail UK from April 2012.
It carried the same image as the viral article and stated that the image featured, Florence Colgate, a student from Kent, England, whose features were determined to almost completely fit the mathematical standard and was deemed as ‘Britain’s Perfect Face.'
The Time magazine and Huff Post also carried pieces on this in 2012.
Incidentally, several articles available on the dubious website carried the name "Catherine Johnson" with the same image and description.
Additionally, the website did not have a 'contact us' or an 'about us' sections, which is common on most official websites.
Lastly, the purported website appeared more like a news portal than a municipal corporation website.
Conclusion: The website carrying the viral website is fake and falsely claims that a free travel scheme for senior citizens will be rolled out in June, across India.
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