Photo of Tej Pratap Yadav dressed as Krishna playing flute to a goat is morphed

by Kinjal

A picture of Tej Pratap Yadav has been making the rounds on social media recently. Tej Pratap is the eldest son of former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and has also served as a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly. In the photo, he is seen playing the flute with a goat standing on the steps below. ABVP student activist Aditya Sharma shared this picture and wrote, “Somebody tell this ninth-grade dropout that Lord Krishna used to keep cows as pets, not goats.”

Twitter user Janvi Singh posted this image with the same message. (Archive link)

It is widely shared on Twitter and Facebook.

Fact-check

Alt News examined Tej Pratap Yadav’s social media accounts and found that he had shared this picture on his Instagram page on December 4, 2019. However, unlike in the viral picture, there is no goat in the original.

He had also shared a video similar to the photo on Instagram in January 2020 and June 2020. The clip does not contain the goat either.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tej Pratap Yadav (@tejpratapyadavrjd)

We performed a reverse image search of the goat in the viral photo on Yandex and found it on a website called Top PNG. According to the website, this picture was published on April 23, 2019. It is noteworthy that the file format of this image is a PNG, which means it has a transparent background and can easily be placed or added onto another image.

This means that a user had inserted a PNG of a goat onto an image posted by Tej Pratap Yadav on his Instagram. The image was then circulated online while mocking the leader.

About the Author

Kinjal Parmar holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology. However, her keen interest in journalism, drove her to pursue journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. At Alt News since 2019, she focuses on authentication of information which includes visual verification, media misreports, examining mis/disinformation across social media. She is the lead video producer at Alt News and manages social media accounts for the organization.