Old Photo Shared To Claim West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee ‘Faked’ Forehead Injury

The photo of Mamata Banerjee with a bandage on her forehead dates back to January 2024 and is not recent.

The photos do not show West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee faking her recent forehead injury.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

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)

(Archives of more claims can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the photo showing a bandage on Banerjee's forehead dates back to 24 January 2024, when she reportedly escaped with minor injuries after a car accident while travelling from Bardhaman to Kolkata.

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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