Book on ‘Conversion’ on Sonia Gandhi’s Shelf? It’s an Edited Pic

The viral claim reads that there's a conversion book on Sonia Gandhi's bookshelf. 

(Source: Photo altered by The Quint)

Video Editor: Abhishek Sharma

A photo of Congress President Sonia Gandhi has gone viral on social media with the claim that she has a book titled “How to convert India into Christian nation” on her bookshelf.

However, the photograph has been edited to add the text to the book. The actual photograph shows no such book.

CLAIM

The claim, along with the photo, reads, “Book titled “How to convert India into a Christian nation” in the library of Sonia Gandhi? Plz retweet and expose.”

Another user on Facebook claimed, “Zoom and see right side. One book titled "How to convert India into Christian nation". Any further proof required? (sic)”

An archived version of the post can be found here. 

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The claim along with the image has gone massively viral on Facebook.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The post has gone viral on Twitter and Facebook and the archived links can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

On conducting a reverse image search on the picture, we came across a news article published in Hindustan Times which carried the same image.

(Source: Hindustan Times/Screenshot)

The photo was attributed to news agency PTI. We then looked up PTI archived and saw that the picture was taken from a video address of Gandhi in 2020.

(Source: PTI/Screenshot)

We then checked for the video on Congress’ official Twitter handle using Twitter advance search and came across the original video.

Gandhi had addressed the people of Bihar on 27 October 2020, a day before Bihar went to the polls for the first phase.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

We compared the elements in the viral picture with the ones seen in the Congress’ video and found that the Holy Bible, book titled ‘How to convert India into Christian nation’ and a statue of Jesus Christ had been superimposed in the viral one.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

Further, National President of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) Srinivas BV tweeted, “We've decided to file an FIR against all those handles sharing this morphed image. Dirty tricks of Amit Malware & company won't be tolerated further.”

Clearly, the photo has been morphed and renamed to indicate that Sonia Gandhi reads books on conversion.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)