A picture of actress-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut with a guy is going viral on social media. It has been claimed that gangster Abu Salem is seen in the picture with a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader.
Many users have shared this picture alleging a link between Kangana Ranaut and the culprits of the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts. Salem is currently serving a life sentence. The viral image was captioned in Hindi. It reads, “Some memorable moments with Abu Salem, the lioness’s enemy of devotees.” Ranaut is the BJP candidate from the Mandi constituency in North India’s Himachal Pradesh, which will go to polls on June 1 in the seventh and final phase of the general elections.
At the time of sharing the image, one writing this story, the post has been viewed 57,000 times. Similar posts Archived version can see here.
However, the person in the picture is a former journalist and not criminal gangster Abu Salem.
What do we have?
Kangana Ranaut Instagram But recently clarification has been given regarding this picture. It said her photo with former journalist Mark Manuel was shared as her photo with gangster Abu Salem.
Citing Kangana’s explanation, we searched ‘Mark Manual’ on Google and checked her Instagram and Facebook accounts. We learned that Manuel is a former editor of The Times of India. He has also worked as a journalist for Mid-Day and as a columnist for Hindustan Times and HuffPost.
Manuel shared the currently viral picture on his official Instagram account (See here) on September 15, 2017 with the caption. He wrote, “Kangana Ranaut… Love, sex and cheating.” He also shared the same picture on Facebook on the same day.See here, Manuel wrote in the caption that the photo was taken “a few months ago at Khar’s corner house”. “This was at a champagne brunch organized to celebrate Kangana’s film ‘Simran’ releasing today,” he wrote.
Further investigation of his Facebook account revealed that he had shared a post in October 2023 that contained the same photo (see here) along with other screenshots of some news headlines. We came to know that the now viral photo went viral in 2023 with the same claim.
In the caption below the photo, Manuel explains that a 2017 Huffington Post article (see here), which claimed she was sitting with gangster Abu Salem. He further said that Ranaut and his supporters immediately denied the claim and said that Salem has been in jail since 2002.
On October 1, 2023, RanautSee here) but also clarified that the person sitting next to him is not gangster Abu Salem but journalist Mark Manuel. “I don’t think the Congress people really think that he is the dreaded gangster Abu Salem who casually hung out with me in a bar in Mumbai. He is a former entertainment editor of TOI, his name is Mark Manuel,” he wrote. The collage below includes publicly available photographs of Abu Salem and Marc Manuel and shows that it was Marc Manuel who posed with Ranaut in the viral photo.
decision
Actress-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut is seen posing with entertainment journalist Mark Manuel in a 2017 photo. He has been wrongly linked with notorious gangster Abu Salem. Therefore, we have declared this claim false.
Disclaimer: This story was published by LogicalFacts and republished by Live Hindustan. This has been done under Shakti Collective Project.