By Archis Chowdhury
An image showing a group of people sitting at a table is being shared with the claim that it shows Supreme Court judges Surya Kant and JB Pardiwala sharing a meal with NDTV founders Prannoy and Radhika Roy, along with Communist Party of India leader Brinda Karat.
BOOM found this claim to be false; our investigation revealed that Pardiwala and Kant were not part of the photo at all, which instead shows former editor-in-chief of The Hindu N Ram, his wife, Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P Thiagarajan and Dipali Sikand sitting with the Roys and Karat.
On July 1, 2022, during the plea appeal by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma to club the FIRs against her on her remarks against Prophet Muhammad, Pardiwala and Justice Surya Kant, who oversaw the proceedings, rebuked her for her comments and highlighted her role in igniting communal tensions which eventually led to the murder of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal.
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The photo was found being shared on Facebook with the following caption:
"See with whom the Supreme court judges who passed verdict are having lunch with.
The lady to the left of Roy is the one who got the stay of bull dozer in Delhi..
Rinita Mazumdar,then 2 SC judges, #SuryaKant and #Pardiwala with the naxal gang. Pranab Roy & Radhika Roy are there."
Click here to view the above post.
We ran a search on social media using the first sentence of the caption, and found the photo going viral on Facebook and Twitter with the same claim.
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Fact-Check
While BOOM observed the photo carefully, but could not spot Justice Kant and Justice Pardiwala in it.
Instead, we observed the N Ram, former editor-in-chief of The Hindu, in the photo. We looked through Ram's Twitter feed, and found that he had posted a statement refuting the claim going viral.
In a screenshot of a Facebook post made by him, he states that the two people that the viral captions claim to be Pardiwala and Kant, are in fact him and Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P Thiagarajan. He also wrote that the photo was taken at a restaurant in Ketti valley in Tamil Nadu, near Ooty.
We have reached out to Ram for a comment, and the story will be updated upon getting a response.
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Furthermore, we ran the viral photo through a reverse image search, and came across a tweet made by MindEscapes - a club located in the Ketti region of Tamil Nadu, that carried the viral photo. The post was made with the following caption, mentioning the names of those present in the photo:
"A Chef's Table session with Finance Minister - Tamil Nadu, Mr. P. Thiagarajan, Dr. Prannoy Roy and Mrs. Radhika Roy, Mrs. Brinda Karat and Mr. Prakash Karat, Mrs. and Mr. N. Ram and Dipali Sikand."
