As the West Bengal Assembly election 2021 is due in less than a month, starting from March 27, both Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Trinamool Congress are gearing up for the state polls. Amid this, the arrest of Pamela Goswami on February 19, a BJP youth wing leader in Kolkata who was found in possession of cocaine came as a setback to the party. Pamela Goswami is the state secretary of the BJYM, who actively posts updates on social media and shares pictures of party events being held across the state. Social worker and politician, BJP youth leader, Goswami joined the party in 2019 and was enlisted in the BJP camp at a press conference held by state BJP president Dilip Ghosh. This was shortly after Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee’s July 21 meeting in 2019.Two leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) youth wing were arrested with 100 grams of cocaine from south Kolkata’s upscale New Alipore area, police said. Among them were Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) leader Pamela Goswami and Prabir Kumar Dey.
An image that purportedly shows BJP youth wing leader Pamela Goswami riding a bicycle along with PM Narendra Modi is going viral on social media. Netizens are sharing the image with the caption, which translates in English as, “Photogenic creature with Cocaine lover.”
It was found that the viral image is digitally manipulated. The viral image is made by merging two different images. The original picture of PM Narendra Modi sitting on a bicycle in an Indian Express news article titled “Narendra Modi’s foreign tour: Latest pictures, videos from the US, Netherlands, Portugal” dated June 28, 2017. The picture caption to the photo read, “Narendra Modi thanked Netherlands PM for gifting a brand-new bicycle and posed for pictures flaunting the cycle”. The bicycle was gifted to him by his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte at the end of his three-nation tour to Portugal, the United States and the Netherlands in the year 2017.
PM Narendra Modi also tweeted pictures of him on the bicycle thanking Prime Minister of Netherland Mark Rutte for the gift, on June 28, 2017.
After comparing the two original pictures, it can clearly seen that the viral picture of Pamela Goswami riding a bicycle with PM Modi is morphed.
On the other hand, Pamela Goswami’s image of riding a bicycle was shared on her Facebook page on December 1, 2020. Therefore, the image has been tampered with and the claims are misleading.
