Fact Check: Old pic of Vijay Rupani VIRAL as final picture inside ill-fated Air India plane
Former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani was among the more than 240 killed in the Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad on June 12. Reportedly, he was travelling to London to meet his wife and daughter.Now, an in-flight selfie of a woman, where Rupani can be seen in the background, is going viral on social media, with people claiming this was the last photo of Rupani before the tragic crash.advertisement
India Today Fact Check, however, found that this photo was from 2021 and therefore not the ex-CM's last photo inside the ill-fated Air India flight.OUR PROBEWe found that an X user, Majid Ladhani, commented on multiple viral posts claiming this photo was old. Ladhani is the state media head of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Daman and Diu office.In his responses, Majid also shared a screenshot of a Facebook post by a woman named Lina Goswami, who shared the viral photo and wrote that it was taken on June 12, 2021, when she and Rupani were on the same flight.Old one pic.twitter.com/dEiZW4nX0F— Majid Ladhani (@majidladhani1) June 12, 2025Goswami's Facebook profile is private. So, India Today Fact Check reached out to her through Majid Ladhani. Goswami confirmed that the photo was old, adding that it was from October 12, 2021, when she was travelling to London on an Air India flight. She also clarified that she had mistakenly mentioned June 12 instead of October 12 in her Facebook post.advertisementGoswami added that she also sent this picture to her son on WhatsApp on the same date. She shared the WhatsApp screenshot of the same with us, showing the date of October 12, 2021.Hence, it's clear that Vijay Rupani's viral photo is almost four years old — it's not his final photo before the tragic plane crash.Tune In
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