Several Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) leaders and some of the party's official accounts have shared an image showing the party's Gujarat chief, Gopal Italia, standing behind bars with messages of support for the leader, claiming that he was "arrested" by the Delhi Police on Thursday, 13 October.
However, the claim is not entirely true.
Firstly, Italia was not arrested but only detained and was then released after two and a half hours.
Secondly, the image used with the claims is an old one from May, when Italia was arrested with 16 other people for breaking into a fight with BJP workers in front of the BJP office in Surat.
Italia was detained on Thursday from the National Commission of Women (NCW) office in Delhi over his comments against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
CLAIM
Along with social media users, AAP Bihar, AAP Gujarat, MLAs Naresh Balyan, Sanjay Singh and Kuldeep Kumar also shared the photo.
The claims with the photo highlighted BJP's dislike towards AAP and used hashtag #ISupportGopalItalia.
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(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On conducting a reverse image search on Google, we came across a report published Gujarati newspaper Divya Bhaskar in May 2022.
The report carried the same picture of Italia standing behind bars and stated that he was arrested along with 16 other people for engaging in a brawl with BJP workers in front of BJP's headquarters in Surat.
Isudan Gadhvi, AAP leader from Gujarat, had also shared the same photo of Italia on 2 May, and a similar report was also published in another Gujarat-based digital organisation called Vibes of India.
According to another report by the English news magazine India Today, on 3 May, the police had registered a case against several people, including the party’s state unit chief Italia.
It also stated that the arrested AAP leaders were later released on bail.
Several reports published, including the English newspapers The Indian Express and The Hindu, stated that Italia was not arrested but detained by the Delhi police on 13 October. He was also released after two and a half hours.
The report by The Indian Express also mentioned that Italia was detained over a video in which he allegedly made "abusive remarks" against PM Modi.
Clearly, an old image was shared while lining it to Gopal Italia's recent detention.
(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer.)
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