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| - Fact Check: S**t happens, but this airport signboard is morphed
A Facebook user had posted a picture of an apparent signboard at an Indian airport that reads, "SHITTING ON CARPET STRICTLY PROHIBITED", which went viral. India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the signboard to be morphed.
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India Today Fact Check
The viral picture is morphed. The Airports Authority of India has clarified that no such signboard is there.
Internet can be a funny place! All of us have come across signboards or hoardings that intended to convey a different meaning but ended up tickling our funny bones.
One such picture of an apparent signboard at an Indian airport reads, “SHITTING ON CARPET STRICTLY PROHIBITED”. A Facebook user posted the picture with the caption, “I wonder what happened to make this sign needed”.
Other similar posts can be seen here and here.
However, India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the signboard is morphed.
The signboard has “Airports Authority of India” written on it. However, what raised doubts is the Hindi text which translates to, “Eating on the floor is prohibited”.
Using reverse image search, we found that a similar picture was shared by Instagram user Justin Ross Lee on August 23, 2015. Here, the signboard says, “EATING CARPET STRICTLY PROHIBITED”.
Ross Lee had shared the same picture on Facebook and tagged the location as Chennai International Airport.
Bollywood stars Arshad Warsi in 2015 and Shabana Azmi in 2019 shared this picture.
On November 1, 2019, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) clarified that the picture is morphed.
Important Announcement from #AAI Since 2015, this morphed image shown has been doing rounds time and again. Requesting everyone not to circulate any such photographs without proper fact-checking. pic.twitter.com/TCvvqW250o
— Airports Authority of India (@AAI_Official) November 1, 2019
However, a Chennai resident named Prashanth Prabhu had replied to AAI that he’d seen the board saying “EATING CARPET STRICTLY PROHIBITED” at the airport.
Replying to Prabhu, another user shared an image with the correct text on the signboard.
pic.twitter.com/M4mvUAuqS6
— Anil Kumar (@kaunmialr) November 2, 2019
Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri in a recent tweet also said that the image circulating since 2015 is morphed.
Listen people.
This is a morphed image doing the rounds since 2015.
It resurfaced in 2019. AAI had pointed this out even then.
Let us all do a bit of due diligence before putting such things out.
Fake images & morphed pictures don’t do any good to people who are posting them. pic.twitter.com/JLKkyT5Fcm
— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) June 9, 2021
For further confirmation on the viral picture, we contacted Vishnudas, Manager (CC) at AAI, Chennai airport, who said it is morphed and there is no such signboard.
We could not confirm if the earlier signboard was actually installed at the Chennai airport. There is a possibility that it was replaced after officials realised the goof-up or it could’ve been a fake image.
But the viral picture of the signboard saying “SHITTING ON CARPET STRICTLY PROHIBITED” is fake.
(With inputs from Sonali Khatta in New Delhi)
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