Photo Showing Amit Shah Visit Red Light Area Sonagachi Is Morphed

An image purported to show union home minister Amit Shah paying a visit to Kolkata's Sonagachi area during his campaign in West Bengal has been morphed.

The image shows Shah entering a small alley which has 'Room Number 13 Savita Rani Sonagachi' written on the wall. BOOM found that the image has been morphed to include the details of the address on the wall. In the original photograph, Shah was participating in a door to door campaign in Bhowanipore, for Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Rudranil Ghosh.

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.

One such post has been captioned as, "Asia's largest prostitution hub. #Sonagachhi The Thai people started their journey in India only with Sonagachi".

(Original caption in Hindi: एशिया का सबसे बड़ा वैश्यावृत्ति का अड्डा। #सोनागाछी थाईलेंडियों ने इंडिया में अपने सफर की शुरुआत सोनागाछी से ही की थी)

Click here for the post and here for the archived link.

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The morphed image is viral on Facebook and Twitter with a similar narrative.

Fact Check

BOOM ran a reverse image search on the viral photograph and found the original image, which was tweeted by Amit Shah on April 9 during his campaign in Kolkata. In the original photograph an empty wall can be seen in front of Shah who enters the alley.

Shah tweeted the images and stated that they were part of his door-to-door campaign in Kolkata's Bhowanipore area.

Below is a comparison between the morphed image and the original one.

The same image was published by several news outlets as well.

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Amit Shah participated in a door to door campaign with BJP's Bhowanipore candidate Rudranil Ghosh ahead of the fourth phase of polls on April 9. The area witnessed poll related violence on April 8 following which Shah and Ghosh campaigned in the alleys of the area of Kolkata on Friday.