A photo, showing former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi walking with a young Rahul Gandhi is being widely shared on social media. In the photo, the Gandhis are flanked by people carrying bags on both sides.
The claim: Those sharing this image have claimed that the man carrying two bags, seen on the left side of the image, is current Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge.
How did we find out the truth?: While browsing social media for more claims, we came across an X post quoting a claim, which identified the man as one Siddharth Reddy.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for more photos of Reddy.
This led us to an India Today article which was first published as a cover story of its magazine's September 1983 issue, titled 'Rajiv Gandhi and his men'.
The article identified him as the person "in charge of the affairs in Amethi," which was Gandhi's constituency in Uttar Pradesh, adding that Reddy was formerly an activist of the Youth Congress in Andhra Pradesh.
A keyword search for more information about Reddy led us to an NTV Telugu report on YouTube, which was published in 2021 after Reddy passed away.
It carried several images of Gandhi and Reddy together, showing the same man seen in the viral claim.
We then looked for visuals of Kharge with Gandhi, which led us to an X post on Kharge's official account.
He shared a post in 2021, which showed him with Gandhi with the hashtag 'Remembering Rajiv Gandhi'.
On comparing the two, one can clearly see that the person in the viral claim is not Kharge.
Conclusion: An old photo showing Rajiv and Rahul Gandhi with Siddharth Reddy is being shared on social media, where users have misidentified the latter as Mallikarjun Kharge.
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