A recent video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleaning Tamil Nadu’s Mamallapuram beach has initiated mixed response among netizens. While many appreciate the PM for the hands-on job, others call it a staged PR exercise executed with the help of a planned photoshoot.

The claim

Congress MP from Tamil Nadu’s Shivaganga constituency Karti Chidambaram tweeted three images on Saturday night. Two of them show PM Modi cleaning the beach and the third image is of an equipped camera crew in action. He wrote Jai Shree Ram as the caption of the tweet.

Karti is the son of former finance minister P Chidambaram who is lodged in Tihar jail in connection with the INX Media case lodged by CBI.

Till the filing of this story, the post was liked by more than 2,300 users and retweeted almost 800 times. The archived version of the tweet can be seen here.

The truth

India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found Karti’s post to be misleading. The viral image showing the camera crew is not related to PM Modi’s Mamallapuram beach cleaning event. This image is around 14 years old and was taken at West Sands beach, beside St. Andrews Cathedral in Fife, Scotland, by a TV production crew.

AFWA probe

The initial reason for suspicion was that the crew comprised mostly of what looked like foreigners.

A few users, including Twitter handle @pillai_007, pointed out on Karti’s post that the same viral picture was taken from the webpage of Tayscreen.

Tayscreen is an organisation based in Dundee City, Scotland, UK, which works with various government councils of Scotland in media production-related activities.

Geo-locating the viral image

A much bigger picture of the viral image with a wider horizon and background can be found on the Tayscreen website. In this image, we can see old European structures with two spires and a tower in the background.

A combination of reverse image and keyword search indicates that the location of the viral image is West Sands beach, Fife, Scotland.

With the help of satellite images and Google street view, we could locate and identify the two monumental spires and towers in the background as ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral and St. Rules Tower in Fife, Scotland.

These historic structures can be seen from the West Sands beach, where the camera crew can be seen shooting with equipment.

AFWA reaches out to original photographer

We found a similar image used in another website for research activities called Institute for Capitalising on Creativity’ They had given credit to Julie Craik, Tayscreen Scotland, for the photo.

AFWA contacted Julie Craik for more details on the viral image. Craik confirmed that this photograph was taken by her around 2005. She wrote back through Linkedin, this image was a TV production crew in St Andrews Scotland UK taken by me for TayScreen which I run. It was around 2005.

Conclusion

Therefore, we can say that one of the viral images which Karti Chidambaram posted on Twitter along with PM Narendra Modi’s pictures from Mamallapuram was unrelated, and hence the post is misleading.

However, we could not verify whether any crew was present at the spot while PM Modi was cleaning the beach. But the viral image used by Karti to show the camera crew was taken around 2005 in Scotland.

Even Karti later clarified in a separate tweetthat he was wrong in his choice of one photo.