Did Rahul Gandhi book ticket to Bangkok on June 5, 2024, the day after poll results? Fact Check

A Vistara flight boarding pass in the name of Rahul Gandhi, Congress leader, is making rounds soon after the Exit Polls in India predicted a thumping majority for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

Rahul Gandhi’s flight ✈️ ticket for June 5 – 2024 Business class Vistara Airlines 😲🤔 pic.twitter.com/sdGGnkc6nG

— M S Manral ( Modi ka pariwar ) (@MSManral2) June 1, 2024

Rahul Gandhi running away to Bangkok on June 5. pic.twitter.com/99RCf7LYsT

— CrusaderCat (@PeterCat71) May 31, 2024

The claim says that the ticket of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi leaving the country on June 5, soon after the official counting and announcement of election results on June 4, 2024. The boarding pass shows Rahul Gandhi’s name as the ticket holder and mentions a travel date of June 5, 2024, from India to Thailand’s Bangkok.

FACT-CHECK

When Digiteye India received the image for a fact-check on its WhatsApp tipline, we took the image and conducted a Google Reverse Image Search. The results showed that it was an old image, digitally altered. There are 2 different flight numbers in the same boarding pass. Picture has 1D barcode whereas the airline uses PDF417 barcode.

Secondly, name of the passenger is always written last name first, but in this image, it is first name written first. It should be Gandhi first and Rahul next. Thirdly, the flight number on the boarding pass is showing two different numbers — ‘UK121’ in one place, and ‘UK115’ in the counterfoil. Also, the boarding pass with UK121 shows that it is a boarding pass of a domestic flight.

When we took the image of the ticket and searched in Google Reverse Image search, we found that the ticket image was originally posted by Ajay Awtaney, who boarded the Vistara international flight from Delhi airport to Singapore on August 9, 2019. He used the image in an article published by a website named ‘Live From A Lounge‘.

Hence, the image has been altered to claim that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi booked his ticket to go to Bangkok on June 5, 2024.

Claim: Boarding pass of Rahul Gandhi shows he running away from the country on June 5, 2024.

Conclusion: The claim is false. The ticket is morphed, digitally altered and lacks PDF417 barcode used by airlines.

Rating: Totally False —