Viral: Photoshopped image of Sambit Patra dining on footpath with homeless couple

by Jignesh Patel

A picture of BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra purportedly dining with a homeless couple on a footpath is doing the rounds on social media. Posting the same picture, journalist Niranjan Takle took potshots at the Modi government saying, “Bjp candidate Sambit Patra has exposed all Modi lies in single photo. House for everybody , Ujwala Gas, Digital India, Electrification, 2 crore Jobs, Swacch Bharat, Smart city etc etc.” Later, the tweet was deleted. An archived version of the tweet can be accessed here.

Actor-turned-politician and Congress leader Nagma Morarji also tweeted the same photo with identical text.

Political commentator and writer Zainab Sikander tweeted the image with the caption, “कुछ लोगों की भूख का कोई अंत ही नहीं होता। (Some people have no end to their hunger)”. The tweet has now been deleted.

Sasidharan Pazhoor, a Twitter user posted the image taking a jibe at Patra, “Hey @sambitswaraj, are you addicted to eating? I haven’t seen you doing anything else in your campaign.”

Photoshopped image

Reverse searching the image on Google yields no results. After flipping the image horizontally and then performing a reverse search of the image, Alt News found a 2016 article which had the original photograph.

BJP has fielded its spokesperson Sambit Patra as a candidate for Puri parliamentary constituency in Odisha. As a part of the election campaign, Patra has posted several pictures of his visit to the constituency.

In the photoshopped image, Patra was cropped from one of the images posted above and superimposed on another, to suggest that he was eating on a footpath. This photoshopped image was earlier debunked by BoomLive.

A photoshopped image of Sambit Patra was shared by several prominent individuals suggesting that it depicts the failure of Modi government.

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About the Author

Jignesh is a writer and researcher at Alt News. He has a knack for visual investigation with a major interest in fact-checking videos and images. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Gujarat University.