Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Several social media users are circulating photos of shoes with the Indian tricolour marked on its soles, criticising the manufacturer ‘Campus Shoes’ for the design that violates the Indian Flag Code, 2002.
The archived version of the tweets can be seen here, here and here.
Fact check
Newschecker first ran a keyword search for “Campus shoes tricolour”, we were led to this tweet by @Akyadav1211, dated November 22, 2021, featuring the viral photos. We saw similar tweets from around that time, indicating that the viral photos were old ones.
We then came across a reply by Campus Shoes to a Twitter user who shared the photo, dated November 23, 2021, apologising for the mistake and stating that they have “withdrawn this merchandise from all our directly controlled channels with immediate effect”.
We then went to their Twitter handle, where they had pinned a company statement, dated February 10, 2023. The statement noted that the photos were doing the rounds of social media again, while clarifying that the product was discontinued a long time back and is not on sale now.
Conclusion
Old photos of Campus Shoes’ controversial tricolour-themed footwear, which was discontinued then, have gone viral again.
Result: Missing context
Sources
Campus shoes tweet, November 23, 2021
Campus shoes statement, February 10, 2023
(This fact check was first done for Newschecker Hindi by Saurabh Pandey)
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
