So far in the West Bengal campaign, top BJP leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and party president J.P. Nadda have chiefly targeted CM Mamata Banerjee, and have hardly mentioned the Congress. West Bengal has completed four out of the eight phases of assembly polls. Amit Shah along with other heavyweight BJP leaders have been conducting rallies in parts of poll bound Bengal. Sonagachi, a north Kolkata neighbourhood, is largely inhabited by sex workers. Netizens have taken a dig at Shah for his campaign trail in the Sonagachi area, based on the morphed image. An image of Home Minister Amit Shah campaigning in the poll-bound West Bengal has been edited to falsely claim that he visited Kolkata’s red light area Sonagachi.
The image shows Shah entering a small alley which has ‘Room Number 13 Savita Rani Sonagachi’ written on the wall. One such post has been captioned as, “Asia’s largest prostitution hub. #Sonagachhi The Thai people started their journey in India only with Sonagachi”.
In the original photograph, Shah was participating in a door to door campaign in Bhowanipore, for Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Rudranil Ghosh.
The original image doesn’t contain the ‘address’ with the word ‘Sonagachi’ and was taken during Shah’s door-to-door campaign in Bhabanipur for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
After conducting a reverse image search the original image was found, which was shared by the home minister on Twitter on 9 April, with the caption, “Few more from Bhabanipur’s door to door campaign.” Shah tweeted the images and stated that they were part of his door-to-door campaign in Kolkata’s Bhowanipur area.
A Times of India video of Shah’s door-to-door campaign in the area, in the same attire as the viral image was also found, thus, evidently, an image of Amit Shah campaigning in West Bengal has been edited to make it appear as though he visited the Sonagachi area.
