Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi today took to Twitter to share an image of social distancing being practiced. People in the picture were standing on circles which were drawn away from one other.
https://twitter.com/DrAMSinghvi/status/1242668437404405760?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSinghvi tweeted that the social distancing was being practiced at a milk booth in Puducherry, Tamil Nadu.
Prima facie itself it could be concluded that the image is from Gujarat as the names of the stores are written in Gujarati. To identify which place the image is from, OpIndia tried to look for clues. One of the stores has the word ‘Chandrumanawala’ printed on the board. Chandrumana is a place in Gujarat, near Patan.
Another store one can see in the background is one ‘Bhagwati sweet mart’. If you search for ‘Bhagwati Sweets Patan’ on Google, it throws up the image of the store which is similar to that in the above picture.
Amusingly, the line is for grocery store and not even a milk booth. Same image with similar claims was shared by former Times of India Managing Editor (TIMS), Priya Gupta.
https://twitter.com/priyagupta999/status/1242679889913765888?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwHowever, Gupta later corrected herself that the image was from Gujarat. Others also joined in in wrongly identifying Gujarat as Tamil Nadu.
https://twitter.com/Rameezmakhdoomi/status/1242717318578225153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/abhishekjha157/status/1242684145181974529?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwActual photo of a milk booth in Puducherry where social distancing was being followed was shared by Puducherry LG Kiran Bedi.
https://twitter.com/thekiranbedi/status/1242654628002418693?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwAnd while it is Puducherry or Gujarat, milk booth or no milk booth, that Indians have risen to the occasion and paid heed to PM Modi’s call to implement lockdown and social distancing while we fight coronavirus, the efforts of the people are worth encouraging.