Old Photo From Anti-Mosquito Spray Ad Falsely Linked To Kangana Ranaut Slap Row

Newly-elected MP and actor Kangana Ranaut was allegedly slapped by a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) constable at Chandigarh airport on Thursday.

Ms Ranaut, who won the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi, was about to board a flight for Delhi when the incident happened.

The CISF constable reportedly told the actor that the action was in response to her “disrespecting farmers”, likely referring to Ms Ranaut’s past comments on the farmers’ protest.

Claim:

Photo of the slap mark on Kangana Ranaut’s face.

Fact:

Newschecker ran a keyword search for “Kangana Ranaut slap photo”, which led us to multiple news reports on the incident, however, none of the articles had such a photo, raising our doubts.

We ran a reverse image search, which led us to this write-up on Ads of the World, featuring a zoomed-out photo of a woman’s face with a slap mark. “This professional campaign titled ‘Slap two’ was published on May 30, 2006,” read the caption of the photo, indicating that it was for a mosquito killer spray from international pesticide brand Baygon.

A comparison of the two images shows that it is the same photo that has been zoomed in and gone viral (right) on social media.

A further search led us to this coolmarketingthoughts.com blog post, dated May 31, 2006, on the ad campaign, which featured similar photos.

“Baygon is the solution to the non-masochists amongst us. If you need to get rid of the flying bullies painlessly and you’re tired of slapping yourself, you should try the spray can,” read the post, hailing the ad.

Result:

False

(This story was originally published by Newschecker, and republished by NDTV as part of the Shakti Collective)