Fact Check: Rahul Gandhi Image With Journalist Given False ‘George Soros’ Spin
Image of Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi with a woman shared online with the claim that the latter is former PM Manmohan Singh's daughter Amrit Singh, and that something ‘sinister’ is going on.
The Verdict False
The image shows Rahul Gandhi with Amulya Gopalakrishnan, a columnist and wife of Congressman Amitabh Dubey, not Manmohan Singh's daughter Amrit Singh.
What is the claim?
An image of Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi standing with a woman in a brown shirt has been shared on social media, claiming that the woman is former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's daughter Amrit Singh. The post also includes Singh’s photo at the bottom right.
One such post on X (formerly Twitter) sharing the image with the caption, "Hi #RaulVinci. Where were you travelling with Amrit Singh, Director, Accountability, Liberty and Transparency of Open Society Justice Initiative - a project funded by George Soros?" At the time of writing this fact-check, the post has garnered 389,400 views, 13,000 likes, and 6,400 reposts. While another post alleged, "There is something very, very sinister going on. I hope the Indian govt and agencies are on top of this." An archived version of these posts and similar others can be found here, here, and here.
The image is being shared on Facebook with similar claims, and archived links can be viewed here, here, and here. It also went viral in 2023 with the same claims.
However, the woman in the image is not Singh. The woman in the viral picture with Gandhi is Amulya Gopalakrishnan, a columnist and wife of Amitabh Dubey, who oversees research and monitoring at the Indian National Congress (INC) party.
What did we find?
We found that the now-viral image first surfaced in 2023, with social media users questioning the person's identity. At the time, Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate had stated that the woman in the picture is Gopalakrishnan. In a post on X, Shrinate wrote, "The gentleman in the pic is Rahul Gandhi’s childhood friend Amitabh Dubey, and the lady is Amitabh’s wife, Amulya." The post is archived here.
A close look at the image showed that the woman in the image bears very little resemblance to the former prime minister's daughter.
A Google search showed that Gopalakrishnan is a journalist and columnist who writes for multiple Indian media houses, such as The Indian Express, The Times of India, and The Frontline. We compared her profile image from The Indian Express with the viral image. Based on the facial structure and features, we could infer that the woman in the viral image resembles the journalist more than Singh.
Gopalakrishnan married Dubey in January 2011, as The Times of India reported, and Gandhi had also attended the wedding. Dubey is the son of Suman Dubey, who was an associate of the Gandhi family and one of the board of trustees of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. He is in charge of research and monitoring at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) and the president of Delhi’s All India Professionals Congress (AIPC).
While Logically Facts could not find the exact date and the location of the image, the evidence shows that the woman in the image has been misidentified.
Amrit Singh and the George Soros link
Manmohan Singh’s daughter Amrit Singh was indeed a director of the Accountability Division at the Open Society Justice Initiative, part of the Open Society Foundations funded by American philanthropist George Soros. Earlier, an image of Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton had gone viral with the false claim that it was Singh. Our fact-check can be read here.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has often linked Gandhi with Soros, accusing him of meeting close aides of the philanthropist to "destabilize the government”. The allegations had emerged in the aftermath of US-based research firm Hindenburg's reports of alleged financial misconduct by billionaire Gautam Adani's companies. The Congress had demanded a probe into the allegations.
The verdict
An image of Rahul Gandhi standing with journalist Amulya Gopalakrishnan has been shared with the false claim that the woman is Manmohan Singh’s daughter, Amrit Singh, who formerly worked with an organisation funded by billionaire George Soros.
(This report first appeared on logicallyfacts.com, and has been republished on ABP Live as part of a special arrangement. ABP Live has edited the headline and feature image of the report while republishing)
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