MHA passes off Spain-Morocco border as India’s border 

The Union Home Ministry’s annual report for 2016-17 uses a photograph on page number 40 and claims it to be part of the impressive floodlighting and fencing done by the Modi Government on India’s border with neighbouring countries.

The website dedicated to exposing fake news, however, has tracked the photograph to have been taken in 2006 by Spanish photographer Javier Moyano on the Spanish-Moroccan border.

Sam Jawed from Altnews.in tweeted that her attention was drawn to a claim made by Hindutva.Info, which said that people would be impressed by the great work done by the Modi Government on India’s border. The picture shows a spectacular top view of a winding border road with extensive floodlights lighting up the landscape.

Jawed noticed the sea in the background and wondered on which part of India’s border was the photograph taken. Her research took her to a press release issued by the MHA, which claimed that the Modi government had fenced and floodlit 647 km of the border. The press statement was issued along with the annual report.

While mainstream media dutifully carried the report, Jawed’s research showed that the Indo-Pak border had already been fenced by 2013; that a major part of the Indo-Bangladesh border remained to be fenced. At the end of March, 2017, as much as 1,700 Km of the Indo-Bangladesh border remained to be fenced, found Jawed.

She also discovered various other websites having used the Moyano’s photograph and passing it off as the Indian border. Hindi newspaper Dainik Bhaskar, he found, had used it in 2016.

The MHA surely would have access to photographs of the border, Jawed exclaims, while wondering why the ministry had to use the border of a European country and pass it off as Indian? Moreover, did the MHA violate copyright laws or did it seek the photographer’s permission?