Old photo of Amit Shah with IAS Pooja Singhal, who is under ED probe, viral

An image of BJP president Amit Shah and IAS officer Pooja Singhal has gone viral. Social media users are claiming that it was taken days before the Enforcement Directorate raided several locations linked to Singhal on May 6, 2022, and recovered cash worth Rs 19.31 crores.

Director Avinash Das claimed that the image was shot a few days prior to the raid. His tweet garnered 28,000 likes and almost 6,000 retweets.

घर से करोड़ों का कैश पकड़ाने से थोड़े दिनों पहले पूजा सिंघल की एक तस्वीर। pic.twitter.com/X4dlyf1UNq

— Avinash Das (@avinashonly) May 8, 2022

Activist Himmat Singh Gurjar also shared the same image on Twitter with the same claim.

घर से करोड़ों का कैश पकड़ाने से थोड़े दिनों पहले IAS पूजा सिंघल की एक तस्वीर ये भी हैं.!

क्या कैश में बँटवारा नहीं हुआ इसलिए रेड डाली.? pic.twitter.com/waTZplNYKx

— HIMMAT SINGH GURJAR -हिम्मत सिंह गुर्जर (@himmatsinghgur1) May 8, 2022

This image was widely shared on Facebook.

Fact-check

A lot of social media users claimed that the viral image is not recent but was instead taken in 2017 in Ranchi. Upon further research, Alt News found that the image was taken during the Garib Kalyan Mela which was held on September 16, 2017 in Ranchi. Amit Shah and Pooja Singhal were both present at the event and they were pictured wearing identical attires as is seen in the viral image. (Amit Shah and Pooja Singhal can also be seen together from 29:34 in the video below.)

There are several images from the Garib Kalyan Mela 2017 on Getty Images.

Alt News compared stills from the event and the viral image.

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It can be observed that both the individuals are wearing identical attires as seen in the viral image.

Hence it is evident that an old picture of Amit Shah and IAS officer Pooja Singhal from the Garib Kalyan Mela 2017 was circulated with the false claim that it was taken recently, days before several locations linked to IAS officer Singhal were raised by the ED in a money laundering case, and cash worth Rs 19.31 crores was recovered.