A monochrome photograph showing three women dancing on a bar table while several men watching them is widely circulating on social media. It has been shared with a description: “A rare photo of the Rajmata of Congressmen, who is in the middle bar dancer, Italian Rajmata of Congress party,” claiming that the woman in the middle is senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
The above post can be seen here. (Archive)
NM VERIFIED
NewsMobile verified the claim and found it to be Misleading.
Running the viral image through Reverse Image Search, NewsMobile identified the same photograph uploaded on a Facebook page — I Grew Up In Mortdale 2223 — stating that on November 17,1967, a strike by more than 2,000 brewery workers in Sydney led to what became known as the “Beer Brawl.” After 14 days of negotiations, when workers voted to return to work, go go dancers performed to help patrons celebrate at Rawson’s Hotel in Auburn, Australia.
On closely examining the middle dancer in the viral image and comparing it with known photographs of Sonia Gandhi, it is clear that the woman in the picture does not resemble her.
Since the viral image carried a Getty Images watermark, we searched for it on Getty Images. We found the same photograph listed on the stock website with a creation date of November 21, 1967, and an upload date of July 5, 2011. The caption on Getty Images reads that go-go dancing girls helped break the beer drought at Rawson’s Hotel in Auburn on November 21, 1967.
Furthermore, a keyword search did not yield any credible records or reports linking Sonia Gandhi to any such event or to working as a go-go dancer.
Hence, we can conclusively say that a 1967 go-go dancers’ image from Australia has been falsely linked to Congress’ Sonia gandhi.
