This year 4th December marked the 48th Indian Navy Day and people from all over the country paid tribute and commemorated the role of the Indian Navy. 

To honor the occasion, Indian National Congress tweeted an image of a combat ship to pay tribute to the brave personnel of the forces. After people on social media pointed out and claimed that the posted picture is of the US Navy, the post was taken down by INC. A twitter user named Prakash S posted the screenshot of INC tweet and wrote, "Dear INC India, stop taking lessons from Rahul Gandhi. That’s not an Indian Navy Ship but a US Navy Freedom-class littoral combat ship. Now renaming INC to ANC(American National Congress)."

The truth behind the claim

The ship shown in the picture posted by INC is actually a 'US Littoral Combat Ship Wichita'.  On a simple reverse image search, we found an article on a website named defense blog where this picture was published with the title 'U.S. Navy to Commission Littoral Combat Ship Wichita'.

The same picture was shared by Lt. Governor of Puducherry Kiran Bedi and Former CM of Rajasthan Vasundhara Raje, in their posts on Indian Navy Day. The state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan News put out a tweet that included the same photo.

Interestingly, the Bhartiya Janta Party also tweeted the same image to commemorate the occasion in 2016 and 2017.

In conclusion, the picture tweeted by INC and BJP, and politicians in their social media posts on the occasion of Indian Navy Day is actually a picture of the US Navy ship and not of the Indian Navy.