Officially Doctored Image of Prime Minister Modi at Chennai Floods Causes Scorn In India

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.