Was Congress leader caught in Karnataka with 20 crores which he was to handover to JDS?

“अभी कर्नाटक में राहुल गाँधी का नेता पकड़ा गया 20 करोड़ रूपये के साथ जो j.d.S. को देने जा रहा था कल पार्टी बनी और आज से हेरा फेरी शुरू” “Rahul Gandhi’s leader caught in Karnataka right now with 20 crores rupees. Was going to handover to J.D.S. yesterday party was made and today corruption starts.” (translated) The Facebook post showing bundles of currency seized by the police has been shared over 30,000 times. A second look at the image will give you a déjà vu feeling. Isn’t this the same image that was being shared sometime back in a different context? Let us find out.

On April 22nd, the Facebook page I.T Cell MPCC which is a fan page of the Congress party has posted the same set of photographs with the message, “A BJP worker has been caught transporting 120 crore rupees worth of black money at Tippanahalli in Karnataka. He confessed that this money was to be used in the upcoming assembly election in Karnataka. It seems like all the 2000 rupee notes that have vanished from ATMs are with the BJP”. This post was also viral at the time and was shared thousands of time.

Both BJP and Congress supporters accusing each other with the same set of photographs. The allegation of 120 crore cash recovered from BJP worker has now become 20 crores recovered from Congress Leader. It is not surprising that neither of the two viral posts are true.

In an earlier article, Alt news had already busted the fake news. A Google Reverse Image search revealed that photographs representing two different events were clubbed together in the Facebook post.

The photographs of currency notes were actually taken when Income Tax officials had conducted a raid on an NSE broker in Delhi in November 2017.

The image of the two policemen with the policemen and a man in a purple shirt is from an article of April 18, 2018 which was published in the Tamil version of The Hindu. According to this article, a private bus smuggling currency notes worth 120 crore from Andhra Pradesh to Karnataka was intercepted by the police.

The article thus mentions that since the police could not determine who brought these boxes, a case was registered and investigation is still on. There is no evidence yet of the involvement of political parties, although the police suspect that this money might be used for the assembly polls. Supporters of both political parties have used these images to level allegations against each other.

Even though this fake news has been busted earlier, we see BJP supporters have used the same images to circulate a different version. As always the social media users are at the receiving end of this misinformation.