FAKE ALERT: Alka Lamba falsely claims 57 students died due to covid-19 post COMEDK exam

CLAIM
Congress leader Alka Lamba put out a tweet claiming that 57 students who appeared in the recent COMEDK exam on August 19, 2020 died due to Covid-19.
Accusing the BJP government at the centre of taking student lives, Lamba claimed that 5371 students who took part in the COMEDK exam tested positive for coronavirus whereas 8456 students were quarantined. She used several hashtags demanding postponement of upcoming NEET and JEE exams.

Lamba made these claims after screengrab of a news clipping purportedly from News 18 began doing the rounds on the micro-blogging platform.
The News 18 headline had the same figures as claimed by Lamba.

Titled ‘COMDEK UGET 2020: 57 deaths With 5371 students +ve for Covid 19 , 8456 students qurantined’ (sic), screengrab of this news headline was posted by several Twitter users.
‘Students appeared for the COMDEK many been tested postive for covid 19 with 57 grandparents and parents deaths students onfire (sic),’ read the description below the News 18 headline

TRUTH
It is a doctored headline. News 18 did not publish any such news. There are no credible news reports substantiating the false claims made by Lamba and other Twitter users.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY
On closely observing the News18 screenbgrab posted to make the claims, we found several grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in it. This was the first red flag and got us suspicious.
For instance COMEDK was wrongly spelt as 'COMDEK' and quarantined was misspelt as 'qurantined'.
Apart from this, we found no credible news report that substantiated the claims made.
We then used keywords like ‘COMEDK UGET 2020 News18’ and found a news report published on August 20, 2020 on the News 18 website.
Titled ‘COMEDK UGET 2020: UGET Answer Key to be Released on Aug 23; Details at comedk.org’, the report carried the same image as the one used in the screengrab above, besides having the same date and time of publishing.
We observed both and concluded that it was this very report that fake news peddlers digitally-altered to make false claims of COMEDK candidates dying due to Covid-19 after the exam.

VERDICT
Times Fact Check has found that based on a digitally-edited news, Congress leader Alka Lamba falsely claimed that 57 students who appeared for COMEDK exams contracted coronavirus and died.