This TIME Mag Cover Calling PM Modi ‘Superspreader’ Is Morphed

The morphed image has been circulating as the country crossed two lakh COVID-related deaths on 28 April.

A morphed TIME magazine cover with an image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the word 'SUPERSPREADER' is doing the rounds on social media.

This comes as the number of COVID cases surge in the country, and crossed the grim statistic of two lakh COVID-related deaths on Wednesday, 28 April.

While the global media has criticised PM Modi for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, this TIME's cover is morphed.

CLAIM

The image was shared widely with the text, "Will humanity now have to pay for one man's hunger for power?"

Archived versions of similar claims on Facebook and Twitter can be viewed here, here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We noticed that the date at the top of the viral image says, 'July 17, 2006'.

We looked up the cover for the date on TIME magazine's archive, called Vault. We found that the cover for that particular date was on "The End of Cowboy Diplomacy", with an image of a cowboy hat and boots.

The date at the top, along with the text, "www.time.com AOL Keyword: TIME" was written the same as the viral image.

Since the upper part of the date is cut off in the viral image, we also looked up the TIME cover for an issue dated 17 July 2008. However, the magazine had not come out with an issue on that day.

Further, we also found an online tool called 'Kapwing' that allows users to recreate the TIME magazine cover, whose template matched the viral image.

Clearly, an image of PM Modi has been morphed onto the template. We traced the original image back to 25 February 2021, when the Prime Minister had addressed a public meeting in the poll-bound Puducherry.

The image was taken by photographer R Senthil Kumar and can be found in news agency PTI's archives.

We also looked up the covers of all issues published by TIME magazine in the year 2021, and found that none of them were related to PM Modi.

Evidently, an image of PM Modi has been morphed onto a TIME magazine cover to mislead the public.

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