A set of photos, showing West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, are being shared to claim that she faked a recent head injury to fool people.
What do the photos show?: The first photograph shows Banerjee with a bleeding wound in the middle of the forehead, while the second one shows here with a bandage closer to the right side of it, near the hairline.
An archive of this post can be seen here.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)
How did we find out?: The first photo, which shows the West Bengal chief minister with a bleeding forehead wound in the middle of her forehead, was shared in a post by the All India Trinamool Congress' verified X account on 14 March 2024.
One of the photos was shared on 14 March 2024.
(Source:X/ AITMC/Screenshot)
Several media organisations also reported on the leader's injury, using these photographs. (Links here and here.)
What about the other photo?: We ran a reverse image search on the photograph of Banerjee with the bandage on her forehead, which led us to media reports from earlier this year.
The first result took us to a report by Lokmat Times, published on 24 January 2024, which mentioned that Banerjee had addressed the media after sustaining minor injuries in a car accident.
It carried a photo of Banerjee, which was similar to the one in the claim.
Media reports with similar visuals were published nearly two months ago.
(Source: Lokmat Times/Altered by The Quint)
The Quint had reported that the accident took place while Banerjee was travelling from West Bengals's Burdwan district to Kolkata, returning from an official engagement.
It added that her car had to suddenly apply brakes to avoid colliding with another vehicle, which caused Banerjee to hit her head.
Her injury was "reportedly not serious," and she continued on her way back to the capital city.
We found similar visuals in NDTV's video report of Banerjee narrating the incident, which can be seen starting 52 seconds into this video.
Conclusion: An old photo of West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is being shared to insinuate that she faked her recent forehead injury.
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