Journalist lands in trouble after tweeting morphed image of Modi, govt orders probe

A journalist with a private news channel got into trouble with supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he shared a morphed photo of Modi, who was recently in Saudi Arabia, bending to touch the feet of Saudi Arabian King Salman. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has taken cognisance of the issue, Rajyavardhan Rathore tweeted Monday.

Raghav Chopra, a news editor with CNN-IBN, had tweeted a morphed image of Modi with the caption "Will someone tell me what's Modi ji doing in Saudi? Can't be what it looks like surely."

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Maheish Girri, who slammed the journalist for insulting India and accused him of photoshopping the image, also tweeted it to the official Twitter handle of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Chopra tried to defend his post Sunday saying, "Priya bhakto 'can't be what it looks like' means there's something fishy in the image. Unsurprisingly you lot can't understand basic English (sic)." He also tweeted, "Since my TL has exploded here's a clarification: that pic was posted saying its NOT a genuine pic. Expected to get the original which I did." However, he apologised Monday for sharing the image without confirming the authenticity.

"I sincerely regret posting a morphed picture of the PM on my Facebook page. I should have also verified its authenticity before tweeting it. I apologise to everyone concerned for this unfortunate error on my part," he said in his tweets.

The real image shows Modi bending to touch the feet of veteran BJP leader LK Advani.

CNN-IBN also responded to the issue by tweeting that it was not "aware of this unfortunate lapse of judgement."

"We apologise to everyone for this confusion & deeply regret the error (sic)," they tweeted, after adding that Chopra had shared the image from his personal social media accounts.