A controversy erupted on social media after footage appeared to show India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar involved in an unusual incident during Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony.
The video, which spread rapidly across X (formerly Twitter), captured a moment where a woman wearing a lanyard approached Jaishankar’s vicinity during the ceremony. The footage sparked intense speculation and garnered hundreds of thousands of views, with several verified accounts sharing it widely. One user even called for the Indian government to “take notice” of the apparent incident.
However, a detailed investigation by fact-checking website AltNews, using multiple video sources including the official White House feed and Deutsche Welle’s coverage, revealed a different story. Through frame-by-frame analysis of the ceremony footage, fact-checkers identified that the woman with the lanyard was actually directing a female photographer, identifiable by “a black accessory in her hair,” to move from her position.
The incident serves as a reminder of how easily social media footage can be misinterpreted without proper context, particularly during high-profile diplomatic events where every interaction comes under intense scrutiny.
