The collective sadness at the devastation due to widespread flooding in southern India this week briefly gave way to outrage — and mockery — as the Indian government’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) tweeted an embarrassingly doctored photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi surveying the submerged city of Chennai from the air.
The Photoshopped tweet, superimposing a clearer porthole view on an existing image that Modi himself had tweeted, was quickly deleted from the PIB feed — but not before the screenshot-enabled jokesters of Twitter got a hold of it.
Most users, however, slammed the government agency for what they saw as an unnecessary edit given that Modi did actually conduct the aerial survey.
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Write to Rishi Iyengar at rishi.iyengar@timeasia.com