Fact Check: Viral pic of Indira Gandhi drinking with Dhirendra Brahmachari is AI

A photo of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi drinking champagne with an ascetic and another man has gone viral on social media. Allegedly, the man seated in the middle was Dhirendra Brahmachari, Indira Gandhi’s personal yoga instructor. Those sharing it called the photo a rare one of Indira Gandhi with Brahmachari, whom they claimed shared a romantic relationship with her.India Today Fact Check found that the image is not real. It is AI-generated.OUR PROBEA closer inspection of the viral image revealed several inconsistencies typical of AI-generated content — including a missing armrest and arm and anatomical distortions in Dhirendra Brahmachari's frame. We then used OpenAI's Verify tool, which identifies content generated using ChatGPT, the OpenAI API, or Codex. The results confirmed that the image was created using OpenAI's tools. Hive Moderation, a third-party AI detection tool, gave a 98.1 per cent probability that the image was AI-generated, further confirming the finding.THE PM AND THE YOGIThe nature of the relationship between Indira Gandhi and Dhirendra Brahmachari has long been a subject of speculation, though nothing has ever been conclusively established. Brahmachari began as Indira Gandhi's yoga teacher in the late 1950s and went on to become one of her most trusted confidants. Through the 1970s and 1980s, his closeness to the Prime Minister gave him significant access to political power, despite holding no official government position.Katharine Frank, biographer and author of “Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi”, described Brahmachari as an important and enigmatic presence in Indira Gandhi's life, noting his unusual access to her private space during yoga sessions. Frank's biography also records that Brahmachari was permitted to use a four-seater M-5 private aircraft during the Emergency in 1976, a privilege that earned him the nickname “Flying Swami”. He died in a plane crash in 1994.Despite all this, however, claims suggesting a romantic relationship between Brahmachari and Indira Gandhi remain unsubstantiated.Thus, it is clear that the viral image is not real.- EndsPublished By: Pathikrit SanyalPublished On: Aug 17, 2026 18:31 IST