The day we reach out to Pratik Sinha, founder of the two-year-old fact-checking website Alt News, his team is busy collating data to counter a piece that has gone viral on free messaging apps and social media.

The story, he says, claims that former PM Rajiv Gandhi would always be accompanied by his wife, Sonia Gandhi, during public gatherings. It goes on to incorrectly state that while Rajiv attended 181 rallies in all, Sonia only participated in 180 of these. She missed the last one in Sriperumbudur near Chennai, where he was assassinated in 1991. What it suggests is that the former president of Congress was aware of the tragic fate that was to befall her husband, says Sinha, a software engineer and new-age warrior, fighting the malicious world called fake news.