Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday tweeted a clarification just after an old image of a ‘mistranslated’ airport sign started performing the rounds of the Internet once more, flagging it as fake. “Listen people. This is a morphed image doing the rounds since 2015,” Mr Puri tweeted, sharing pictures of the sign in query. He additional mentioned that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) had issued a clarification on the morphed sign in 2019 as properly, when it had resurfaced on social media.
“Farsh par khaana sakht mana hai,” the sign reads in Hindi, which translates to “Eating on the floor is strictly prohibited.” On the sign, on the other hand, the translation reads: “Eating carpet is strictly prohibited”, with the word “on” missing.
The aviation minister’s current clarification on the sign came just after the image was shared by a Twitter user this week, who recommended that the AAI required Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s aid to appropriate the language on the sign.
Responding to the now-deleted tweet, Mr Tharoor had mentioned, “They are incorrigible” – as a screenshot shared by Mr Puri shows.
“Let us all do a bit of due diligence before putting such things out,” the aviation minister urged in his tweet. “Fake images and morphed pictures don’t do any good to people who are posting them.”
Listen people today.
This is a morphed image performing the rounds given that 2015.
It resurfaced in 2019. AAI had pointed this out even then.Let us all do a bit of due diligence ahead of placing such points out.
Fake photos & morphed photographs do not do any excellent to people today who are posting them. pic.twitter.com/JLKkyT5Fcm— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) June 9, 2021
According to news web page UPI, the sign was truly photographed back in 2015 by businessman Justin Ross Lee, who had shared it on Facebook. According to his post, the image had been taken at Chennai International Airport.
In 2019, actress Shabana Azmi had also shared a photo of the airport sign on Instagram, just after which the AAI had pointed it out as fake. “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,” the Airports Authority of India mentioned in its tweet at the time.