Don’t Get Teary Over That Photo Arjun Rampal Had Shared, It’s Fake

Shahid Kapoor was trolled last year for posting the same fake story, showing how resilient fake news can be.

File image of Arjun Rampal. 

(Photo Courtesy: Pinterest)

While the spread of fake news has mostly been credited to the media, celebrities and other influential persons definitely contribute their fair share to the mountain of misinformation floating around on the internet.

A year after Bollywood star Shahid Kapoor was trolled on social media for posting a viral picture of a cheetah-deer hunt that was accompanied with a story about a mother’s sacrifice, his colleague Arjun Rampal went ahead and posted the same thing!

The post contained a compelling picture of three cheetahs surrounding a stoic-looking impala, with a heart-rending story about how the impala had sacrificed herself to the cheetahs so that her young calves could escape. Rampal has now deleted the instagram post after users fact-checked him, but it was similar in substance to Shahid’s earlier one:

As Arjun Rampal has taken down his post, this is the one that Shahid Kapoor had put up, which contains the same picture and message. (Screenshot from Shahid Kapoor’s Instagram post that was later taken down)

As reported by NDTV, the photo was clicked by well-known photographer Alison Buttigieg in 2013.

Guess what? That’s fake news!

Neither the emotional story behind it was true, nor did the photographer go into depression, NDTV reported.

To confirm this further, the photographer herself, Alison Buttigieg had put up a long post on Facebook, saying:

My Stranglehold photo went viral with a completely ridiculous fake story accompanying it, and implications I fell into depression after I took it (seriously who comes up with this crap?!?) - not to mention the gross copyright violations.

Alison Buttigieg on a Facebook post

“What a vile world we live in, full of stupid gullible people spreading #fakenews like crazy,” she had added.

What’s the actual story?

Buttigieg linked to her own photography page, complete with more pictures from the kill, in which she explains that the viral photo was taken from a series of photos that were shot while a mother cheetah was teaching her cubs how to kill. The ill-fated impala was eventually eaten. There is no mention of the impala sacrificing herself for her young ones, or indeed any mention of her calves.

Social Media Trolls Rampal

Social media naturally had a ball at Rampal’s expense. Users on both Instagram and Twitter picked up Rampal’s blunder and while some laughed, others requested that he doesn’t fall prey to the era of fake news, especially considering his far-reaching influence.

(Photo courtesy: Instagram/@fahim045)

(Photo courtesy: Instagram/@iamashutosh1)

And some more.

(Photo courtesy: Instagram/@subrojyotidey)

Following the backlash, Shahid Kapoor had deleted his post last year.

(With inputs from NDTV)