An image of Aam Aadmi Party leader from Gujarat, Gopal Italia, with the man who attacked Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta is doing the rounds on social media. The Delhi CM was attacked at her official residence on August 20 when she was holding a Jansunvai or public grievance redressal meeting.
Her attacker was 41-year-old Rajesh Khimji Sakriya, who posed as a complainant and came to her residence in Shalimar Bagh, where the public hearing of grievances was held. He charged at the CM and attacked her, causing her to fall. According to an Indian Express report, Sakriya is from Rajkot, Gujarat, and was upset at the Supreme Court verdict on packing away stray dogs in the Delhi-NCR region in shelters. An FIR has been registered against him for assault with intent to murder.
A few hours after the incident, Delhi Moti Nagar BJP MLA Harish Khurana shared a photograph of the attacker along with another image of him standing next to AAP’s Gujarat MLA Gopal Italia. Hinting at a political conspiracy by AAP, Khurana said the image was telling of the association between Italia, who is also a close ally of former Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, and Rekha Gupta’s attacker.
News outlets Republic Bharat, Aaj Tak, Punjab Kesari and VOCALTV.in featured Harish Khurana’s X post, amplifying his claims. Over 30 minutes into Aaj Tak’s show, when the image is said to be fake, a BJP spokesperson tells their AAP counterpart why they were not lodging a complaint instead of debating on TV?
BJP Mumbai’s minority morcha president Wasim Khan, BJP Delhi’s mahila morcha and national executive member Sumitra Dahiya along with BJP Delhi executive member Jaikishan Goyal also shared the pictures. Describing the accused working for AAP, they accused the party and Gujarat MLA Italia of conspiring to attack the Delhi Chief Minister.
Social media users Ravi Bhadoria, Nandini Idnani, Nehra ji, Manish Gupta and OneIndia Hindi News chief sub editor Siddharth Purohit made similar claims with the viral photos.
Fact Check
While investigating, we found that Gopal Italia had quote-shared Harish Khurana’s X post with his response. Calling the image edited and Khurana’s claims misleading, he wrote that the BJP leader took screenshots from an old video, edited it and posted a fake photo. He also appealed to media outlets to not run it as news without verifying it or they would face legal action.
हरीश खुराना जी, आप की ख़ुद की तो किसी ट्रोलर से ज़्यादा इज्जत है नहीं लेकिन ऐसी घटिया हरकत करने से पहले अपने पिताजी मदनलाल जी की इज्जत की तो परवाह कर लेते?
दो रूपिये Per ट्वीट के हिसाब से काम कर रहे भाजपाई छुटभैये से भी निम्न स्तर के आप के कारनामे देखकर स्वर्गीय मदनलाल खुराना… https://t.co/KjeG09XACl
— Gopal Italia (@Gopal_Italia) August 20, 2025
We then did a reverse image search and landed on a video shared by Gopal Italia’s official Facebook page on August 2, 2025. The same video was also mentioned by Italia in the X post above. The caption of the Facebook video suggested it was regarding a coordination committee meeting of the Visavadar taluk, where the questions by the public were presented, and the government officials of all departments were present.
In the video, the wall and window in the background are identical to the viral photo and Gopal Italia’s clothing, too, is the same. But the accused, Rajesh Khimji Sakriya, does not appear anywhere in the clip. Four seconds into the video, we see the exact same frame as the now-viral image, however, someone else is seen standing in next to Italia.
When we compared the viral image with a screenshot from the original video, the difference became apparent. This led us to suspect that the image was a screenshot taken from the same video and later manipulated.
To be sure, we ran the image through Hive’s AI detection tool. According to this, there was an 86.8% likelihood that the image contained AI-generated or deepfake content.
Thus, the image shared by BJP leader Harish Khurana of Rajesh Khimji Sakriya with Aam Aadmi Party leader Gopal Italia to make claims that AAP conspired with Delhi CM Rekha Gupta’s attacker is doctored. The BJP leader and other news outlets amplified misinformation.
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