By Srijit Das
Several news outlets including Times Now Navbharat, ABP News, News 18 Bangla have used pictures of singer Arpita Mukherjee misidentifying her as the model-turned actor by the same name from whose residence the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said it recovered 20 crore rupees in cash recently.
The misreporting by the news organisations prompted the singer to issue a video statement clarifying that she has no connection with the case and is not the woman who has been detained by ED. Mukherjee has also urged the media channels to rectify their mistake and thanked some of the outlets for acknowledging the error.
On July 22, the ED had carried out search operations at various premises in connection with the fraudulent recruitment in the West Bengal School Service Commission and West Bengal Primary Education Board. During the search operations, the probe agency recovered huge amounts of cash from the residence of Arpita Mukherjee, who is also an alleged close associate of the state's former education minister Partha Chatterjee. Mukherjee reportedly acted in a few Bengali, Odia movies and was also the face of Partha Chatterjee's Durga Puja committee named Naktala Udayan Sangha in 2019 and 2020.
ABP News used singer Arpita Mukherjee's image on one of its YouTube video thumbnails with a Hindi caption saying, "ED has arrested Arpita Mukherjee".
Click here to see an archive of the post.
News 18 Bangla too used the singer's image on one of its video thumbnails with a Bengali caption that translates to, "Advocates have entered into Arpita Mukherjee's residence".
Click here to see an archive of the post.
Times Now Navbharat also used a photograph of the singer for which the channel later issued an apology.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the photograph present on the thumbnail of the news outlets and found a IMDb page identifying the woman as singer Arpita Mukherjee.
An excerpt from the bio reads, "Arpita Mukherjee was the winner of the "Golden Voice Hunt " on Zee tv's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. An Air Force officer's daughter, and an Economics (Hons) Graduate and Sangeet Shiromani from Delhi University, she has a strong musical base with her classical and semi-classical training. She sang a duet song and featured in the music video along with singer Shaan, which was composed by the trio of Gourov Dasgupta, Roshin Balu and Shaan for YashRajFilms and Yfilms "loveshots" ."
Taking a cue from it, we ran a keyword search using words "Arpita Mukherjee" on Facebook and found that the singer has made multiple clarification posts addressing the error.
In a post, she wrote, "I AM "SINGER ARPITA MUKHERJEE" .. I am NOT the Arpita Mukherjee who has been detained by the ED . I have no connection with this case. The lady detained by ED is a Kolkata Tollywood actress. I am utterly surprised that people are confusing her with my profile when there is absolutely no similarity between us . But therein lies the problem with social media . People do not wait to verify facts before jumping the gun and to grab an opportunity to malign or troll someone . This post is meant for all such "brilliant" minds !"
We also found another post where Mukherjee called out several news outlets including Times Now Navbharat, ABP News and News 18 Bangla for the misreporting and demanded a public acknowledgment of their error with an apology.
Mukherjee's video message related to the issue can be seen on her official Instagram profile.
The photograph comparison between actor Arpita Mukherjee who is under ED lens and her namesake singer can be seen below.
Comparison
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