Wasantha Aluwihare’s photo shared as Daljith Aluwihare

News about the suspension of Matale Municipal Councli Mayor, Daljith Nandalal Aluvihare, by Central Province Governor with immediate effect was widely shared on both mainstream and social media. However, many including popular media houses shared the image of the wrong person while reporting the news. In our fact check, we find out that the image claimed to be of Daljith Aluwihare was actually of Wasanta Aluwihare.

Source information:

Facebook Link | Archived Link

A Facebook Page NewsRadio-TNLRN along with number of others had also shared similar photo with caption saying “Daljith Aluvihare suspended from functioning as the Matale Mayor, with immediate effect...”

Another Image of the same person was also shared among the Tamil community with reports of suspension of Matale Municipal Council Mayor.

Fact Check

Daljith Aluwihare, son of famous politician Alick Aluwihare, has four siblings in which Ranjith Aluwihare and Wasantha Aluwihare are well known names in political circles of Matale. Both are former parliament members as well.

Wikipedia Link | Archived Link

To clarify the identities our team decided to research social media accounts of Alick Aluwihare’s three sons Ranjith, Wasantha and Daljith Aluwihare.

We started our research from Ranjith Aluwihare’s social media account. It was evident that Ranjith Aluwihare, resembled his father Alick Aluwihare and did not match any of the images being shared on social media streams in his name.

Ranjith Aluwihare | Archived Link

Next, we had a look at Wasantha Aluwihare’s Facebook page. Here we found the images, which were now circulating on News websites claiming to be of the Mayor of Matale, Daljith Aluwihare.

Wasantha Aluwihare | Archived Link

We went through Dalijth Aluwihare’s Instagram account and found an image with the three siblings (Rajith Aluwihare, Wasantha Aluwihare and Daljith Aluwihare) in one picture as below.

Instagram link | Archived Link | Facebook

However, from Google Reverse Search we noticed that Wasantha Aluwiahre’s images were shared widely as Dalijith Aluwihare in many earlier instances as well. Here is a comparison of Wasantha Aluwihare and an actual image of Daljith Aluwihare.

We noticed some Facebook users asked why they used Wasantha Aluwihare image instead of Daljith Aluwihare in this news article.

Conclusion:

From the investigation, it is clear that the images of Wasantha Aluwihare is being shared as his sibling Daljith Aluwihare, who was the suspended Mayor of Matale Municipal Council