CLAIM
A photo is being shared on social media with the claim that it shows a part of the camera crew that shot PM Narendra Modi plogging on a beach in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Saturday, 12 October, had gone plogging (collecting garbage while on a walk or a run) on the beach outside the Taj Fisherman's Cove Resort and Spa, where he was staying.
Supreme Court advocate and Spokesperson for Congress Brijesh Kalappa shared a photo claiming it to be a behind-the-scenes photo of the crew that accompanied Modi while he was plogging.
The archived version of the tweet can be seen here.
A person by the name of Peter Fernandes shared the same photo along with a few others on Facebook, claiming they were from the same event.
IS THE CLAIM TRUE?
The claim is false. The photos are not of the crew that shot Modi while he was plogging or of the people scanning the beach before Modi undertook the activity.
WHAT WE FOUND
Upon going through the comments on the tweet put out by Kalappa, we came across a tweet by a user who called Kalappa out and showed the original source of the photo.
The Quint visited the website called Tayscreen pictured in the screenshot and looked for the photo. According to the website, Tayscreen is an Australia-based group which promotes Fife and Tayside for media development and film and TV production, post-production and animation.
On clicking on the tab called ‘Opportunities’ on their website, we came across a list of the same. There, we found a tab called ‘Crewing on Projects’, which had a similar photo. Moreover, the tab had a date on it, specifying that it was from 11 April 2012.
While we didn’t find the same photo, we found the available photo to show the same scene as is shown in the photo Kalappa shared, albeit from a different angle.
Upon careful inspection of the photo, we noticed that the same people, wearing the same outfits, could be seen in both the photos.
In both photos, a woman in a jacket and trousers is standing towards the left side of the group, while a woman with blonde hair, wearing a red jacket, is sitting within the group. Apart from these two, a man can be seen wearing the same jacket with a bold red band running across it in both photos. Moreover, the lights set up for the shoot are placed similarly.
Therefore, it is clear that the photo cannot be from the scene of Modi plogging, because it is clearly from a shoot that happened before 11 April 2012 and in all likeliness shows a scene in Australia.
Further, on conducting a reverse search on one of the photos in the Facebook post which shows people conducting a security scanning, The Quint came across an article by The Hindu from 11 April 2019 which carried the photo. According to the caption, it showed a bomb squad inspecting Kozhikode beach, the venue of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public event, before his visit.
According to the article, this was for Modi’s first election rally – Vijay Sangalp – in the state ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Therefore, these photos do not show the scene of Modi’s plogging and have been taken from various other incidents and sources.
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