Rumour

An image of a copy of a Gulf News showing a caricature of Rahul Gandhi along with a partial headline is going viral on social media. The rest of the headline is indistinguishable as the newspaper in the photograph is folded.

A Twitter user Mahesh Vikram Hegde, tweeted the image with a caption "PAPPU goes international. Even Gulf News knows Rahul Gandhi is called PAPPU in India".

The image is being widely circulated on social media with similar claims. 

Our Investigation

When we searched for it, we found that a very similar image was tweeted by the official Twitter handle of Gulf News on Jan 9.

From the image tweeted by Gulf News, we could ascertain that the full headline was "How 'PAPPU' Label has changed Rahul". Here is the full preview of the front page.

In an interview with UAE editor Bobby Naqvi, Rahul Gandhi spoke on his PAPPU Label. He said:

The best gift that I have received was 2014. I have learnt from it like I couldn’t have learnt from anything else. The more difficult my opponents make my life, the harder it is for me, the better it is for me. I don’t get disturbed by this [Pappu]. I appreciate the attacks from my opponents and I learn from them.

Fact

The report is real and was published by Gulf News on 9th Jan 2019. However, the full headline of the report in the viral image is "How 'PAPPU' Label has changed Rahul".

Gulf News didn't call Rahul Gandhi Pappu but they are certainly aware of his Pappu tag in India.